An American Girl in London
by OkThat'sCool
Summary: Just because you're a prince, doesn't mean you're not a douchebag. This ain't your average fairytale. P&P
1. Prince Charming Ain't What He Used to Be

Summary: So you're a prince. That doesn't mean you can't be normal, does it? Well, maybe it does when you have a huge stick up your arse... A very politically incorrect love story.

WARNING: Let the record show that this is not even slightly based on real life, but rather a political construct for my convenience and the pursuit of awesomeness. I have absolutely no commentary on the royal family and am not trying to represent their lives by any means. Got it? Ok. Good.

An American Girl in London

Chapter 1

Prince Charming Ain't What He Used to Be

At 22 Hannah Argos moved to London.

She had just graduated from a sub-standard American University, with substandard grades that granted her a substandard Philosophy degree with substandard job prospects… actually no, fuck that. Substandard didn't even begin to describe how utterly crap her job prospects were. The economy and its ever-spiraling journey down the crapper described her job prospects. Not substandard.

So Hannah Argos, in a rather pathetic act of desperation, moved to London.

It doesn't exactly make sense, does it? I mean, when completely and utterly broke one should probably not move to one of the most expensive cities in the world, conversion rate not included. But Hannah Argos had a plan.

Actually, no, that's a huge lie. Hannah Argos had no plan. She did, however, have an uncle who was a general manager at Harrods who happened to befriend some hoity-toity woman who bought, like, £50,000 worth of rubies after having her second child only to be "Just so goddamn overwhelmed with those obnoxious brats" that she was willing to do anything for reliable help.

So instead of crying herself to sleep over law textbooks like her mother wanted her to do, Hannah threw her belongings in a ratty old duffel, boarded a double-decker plane for 8 hours plus a five-hour time change, and stepped out in the blinding sunshine that was her future as a nanny.

Or at least she would have had this not been London we're talking about where, obviously, it was raining.

"Excuse me, sir!" Hannah waddled up, her duffel weighing her down, to the first man she saw under the overhang (wearily eyeing the rain and her prospects for getting a taxi diminished) in his crisp black suit, typing away on a blackberry as if he were writing a novel of great length. "Do you know how I get to—?" she checked her directions—"Victoria Station."

"Bugger off," the man growled. "Do I look like I work here?" and with that he strode away and Hannah wondered if she'd made a horrible mistake. Oh shit, what had she done, moving to some random goddamn country on a whim?

"There's a sign right there," said a young man that happened to also be waiting on the curb outside Heathrow, cuddling a cup of coffee in his hands, his dark wool raincoat popped up at the collar in a way that typically reminded her of obnoxious Frat brothers, but seemed like a practicality under the current weather conditions.

"Where?"

"There." He nodded his head to the screen lit up back inside the entrance.

"A train? You can take a train?"

"You're in England now. You can take a train everywhere."

"Except Wales," Hannah said as if repeating something she'd heard many times before. "I was told to never go to Wales."

The young man looked back at her with a stone cold expression. "I'm Welsh."

"Shit." Hannah winced and began to edge slowly away; terrified she'd offended the first person she'd spoken to in the entire country.

"Nah. I'm just foocking with you." He grinned and laughed happily. "I'm Scottish."

Hannah smiled back, suddenly entirely at ease with him again, despite the fact that he was a total stranger and wearing black gloves that may or may not have been straight out of a Hollywood murder scene. "Really? You're not exactly broadcasting a strong William Wallace vibe. Where's your kilt?"

"They made me leave my claymore at the border… sadly. And I save the kilt for the lassies." He winked. She giggled… mentally. "But I assure you I'm Scottish. From a town in Speyside where they make all the whisky."

"Well I suppose it explains your funny accent." Hannah wobbled again under the weight of her bag, gave up and slung it back over her shoulder, dropping it unceremoniously onto the curb.

"You're the one with the funny accent." He took a sip of his coffee all the while giving her a very assessing look that could have easily been misconstrued as interest had Hannah actually had the energy to give a shit. "Complete misunderstanding of irony. Must be American."

"Right in one." Hannah grinned. "But not the other." She jabbed out a hand, which he grabbed happily, and they became fast friends. "Name's Hannah. I _am_ American. From D.C. actually."

"Ah. The nation's capital."

"I thought we were only playing on international stereotypes. Aren't you Scottish supposed to be slow in the mind department?"

He laughed. "I didn't say I was from Glasgow!" It might have been a funny joke, but Hannah had no goddamn idea what he was on about. He stopped as soon as he noticed this and shook his head sadly. "Well, now that you're no longer in America, lassie, it's time you know a thing or two. Us Scotsmen are the greatest race of human beings that ever roamed the earth. We invented everything, you'know. All on our own. Better than the Romans, we were."

"Is that so?" Hannah replied, her eyebrow quirked doubtfully.

"Don't doubt it. Any Scotsmen will tell you."

"The only Scotsman I know is Sean Connery and being a Bond fan does not exactly entitle me to the right to consult him about racial arguments."

Now it was his turn to stick his hand out and wait for it to be shaken. "Alasdair MacLeod, but call me Aly," he supplied. "There. Now you know two."

"Well, it's very nice to meet you. You're the first Englishmen—"

Aly growled. "Ack. Don't ever call a Scotsman English. You'll get punched in the bollocks."

"Oh. Shit. Sorry," Hannah replied drily. "I'm surprised I haven't yet learned these things in my long, long stay thus far in the United Kingdom."

"They should really make you pass a test before you board the plane. Keep out the stupid American rubbish."

She let the "stupid American" comment slide. What the hell. She was feeling generous. "Would this test, perhaps, include directions to Victoria station?"

"It's like you don't know anything!" he said in mock exasperation.

"There is only one thing that I know and that is that I know nothing," Hannah replied, proud with herself. Perhaps her substandard degree was worth something after all.

"Well do you know how to read there, Socrates?"

"Yes I know how to do that and I know that I need to get to Victoria Station so that I can catch the subway to Chelsea. So perhaps I know two things."

"If you did know anything, you'd know it's the Tube, not the subway."

Hannah was getting a bit exhausted by this whole run-around. That or the negative 5 hours sleep she'd had in the past 72 hours. "Very helpful. We get it. I'm an ignorant American. What else you got?"

"As I said, there's a sign right over there."

Hannah frowned. No, the degree was utterly wasted. Good thing she spent more time studying spliffs and her Existentialism 403 TA's body. Degree well earned.

"Well thank you very much, Mr. Alasdair MacLeod." Hannah took a deep breath, hauled her bag back on to her shoulder with about as much grace as pigeon with one wing trying to fly, and began to make her way over to said sign back inside the concourse.

"Wait, Hannah Argos," Aly called out to her, stopping her with a hand on her shoulder that had pried her bag out of her grasp with ease and slung it over his own. "I'm heading that way. Save yourself the 20 quid and let me give you a lift."

"Are you sure it's not too much trouble?" But she didn't really give a shit if it was, she was already being led towards the luxurious black sedan about four steps away from where they were standing all the while trying to figure out what exactly "quid" meant.

"No trouble at all. I'm heading that way, actually."

* * *

><p>Samuel Ashton, future Duke of York, was really fucking late.<p>

But, fuck it, what'd he care. Grams could wait. Ha, yeah right. When your grandmother is the goddamn Queen of England, she doesn't wait. Luckily she also doesn't disinherit—provided he didn't go do something stupid like get divorced or dress like a Nazi (…again) the title remained.

Cell phone. Beep-beep. Great. A text from Baldy McGee, aka the future King of England and Sam's tragically doomed older brother. _You're late,_ his brother's, George's, text guy. Sam wouldn't trade places with him for anything. Not even a clean STD rap sheet.

He typed his reply with his signature smirk. _It's truly impossible to find good help these days._

Before he'd even shut his phone and put it back in his slacks' pocket—Beep-beep. _Where's Aly? Grams will kill you._

Sam chuckled to himself and pictured the Grand Old Lady wrestling him to the ground. _She's 103. I'd like to see her try._

George again—_Hitmen, you damn idiot._

_Say fuck. Just say it once._

_Princes don't say fuck, baby brother. Just get here and try not to get arrested._

Sam shook his head sadly and decided not to run with that one. One time when you're 17 you get caught with a Chinese prostitute and you never get to live it down! Or was she Vietnamese? Fuck it. If Hugh Grant can still rake in millions as the loveable, awkward Brit after his indiscretions, then surely Sam would be ok.

But just to be on the safe side, he'd figure he'd find Aly before he got shipped off for another year amongst the starving orphans and disgusting photo ops.

_If I get disinherited, you don't get paid. You know that right?_

He grinned as his phone popped up a response from his trusty sidekick… or was that security guard? _Shut it, Your Majesty. I'm performing my civil service requirements for the year. _

_Oh I'll bet your performing a service of some sort… although I'm sure it's not civil. _Only Aly would stand up a goddamn monarch (or at least, god forbid it, potential monarch) for a fit girl with an innocent smile. Fuck, he'd probably be in Gretna Green with a ring on his finger before Sam would ever get to this damn high tea.

Actually, fuck the tea. Wasn't there a football game on or something?

_I'll be there in five minutes. Just dropping her off in Chelsea._

Oh so there _was_ a girl. And £100,000 bet that all he did was chitchat. Aly never closed the deal. _Just tell me it wasn't Alice. Ugh. That girl smiles more than a goddamn Barbie Doll._

_That could be my future wife. And no. An American._

An American...? _WTF? Slutty?_

_You're an asshole. I'm outside._

And with a snap of his fingers two dark dressed guys swept out behind him and followed him to the car. He opened the back door, looked at the empty back seat and frowned. "And here I thought you were bringing her for me. How much did this one offer to pay you for a round of wango-tango with yours truly?"

"Shut up you bloody weasel and get your fooking arse in the fooking car." Aly growled from the front, already switching the sedan into gear and beginning to slowly pull away, almost causing Sam to eat it on the gravel drive before he hopped into the back seat.

"Some Scottish Guardsman you are," Sam replied, sulking.

"Some might say the same about you, Prince Charming."


	2. Please Tell Me This Isn't True Love

_People seem to be thinking, "Well, this doesn't seem like Pride and Prejudice at all!" Well, I say to you, "Patience, young padwon. These times they are a changing." Which obviously translates to "I have a point, just let me take the longest route I can think of to get there."_

_And for those of you that are not big in the patience department, or fond of P&P stories that veer off the beaten path/plotline, then might I recommend a book to you? It's called _Pride and Prejudice_ by Miss Jane Austen and it's very close to the original and already written, too!_

_Ok. I'm done being snarky now._

An American Girl in London

Chapter 2

Please Tell Me This Isn't True Love

By the time Aly had arrived with Hannah at Lady Worthington's, and despite the constant buzz of an ardent text messenger, the two of them were the bestest of buddies. We're talking "considering getting matching tattoos" kind of buddies.

"206 Highbury? That's the one you want?" Aly asked yet again, eyeing her in obvious disbelief.

"For the sixth time, yes." She socked him playfully in the arm and he mocked hurt. "I know it's hard for you to believe that us commoners could possibly fraternize with such well bred… folk." She had attempted a highbrow British accent, just for shits and giggles. It hadn't gone so well, although Aly seemed to have enjoyed it thoroughly.

"Look at you. Tres posh." His own accent was too gruff to permit him to say such things without eliciting a giggle from Hannah. "So…" Aly drawled as he pulled up to the curb outside a white monstrosity of wealth and decadence. "Your destination, madam." He did an awkward mock-bow from the driver's seat, still forcing the politeness into his voice, as she opened the door to escape. "Take good care of the weans. And please send my highest regards to my dearest Alice."

Hannah leaned back into the car. "Alice? Who's Alice?"

"You'll see." He winked at her briefly. "Now get out, you daft cow. I have far better places to be than wasting my time with lady Worthington's newest servant."

"I'm not a servant. I'm a nanny!"

He flicked her comment aside. "Same foocking thing."

"Thanks again, you crazy bastard." She grinned once more at him and slammed the door after hauling her duffel back out, waving him off as he sped down the street.

And there stood Hannah Argos, once again considering what an entire fuck up she is, except this time, as she stared up at the behemoth of Victorian opulence that was embodied in her future residence, she felt about as significant as a pile of shit on the sidewalk. About as convenient too.

Sometimes you just have to take the plunge. And when you're standing on one of the most posh streets in London in the rain, you should probably take it rather quickly. So Hannah knocked on a door so thick she wasn't even sure if the note would resound through the house. It was like her life was—really, though, she needed to stop waxing poetical about her lame-ass life.

As she reached up to knock again, the door suddenly swung open with such force and speed that Hannah found herself taking a large step back in surprise and staring into the panting form of a slight, but insanely gorgeous blonde girl… or rather young woman.

"Was that Aly that just dropped you off?" she asked quickly, peering down the street lined with luxury cars with her sparkling baby blues.

"Yes?" Hannah yelped as the back of her coat was sprayed with a mist of rain.

"Oh shit, shit!" the blonde slammed her hand against her forehead. "I'm such a bloody moron. Come in, come in." She grabbed Hannah by the hand and yanked her inside the house, then reached back outside and scooped up Hannah's duffel before nearly collapsing under its weight.

She dropped the duffel onto the foyer floor, brushed off her black cocktail dress to smooth out any wrinkles and looked up at Hannah with a triumphant grin. "Well it wont do us any good to sit here all day moping over Aly MacLeod, now will it?"

"No?" Who the fuck was this girl?

As if on cue, she stuck out her hand. "I'm Alice, of course. Alice Kent. Auntie Franny had to go to High Tea, and really it wasn't any bother for me to skive off. I thought it only right since Daniel—the butler—is off visiting his sick mother, and really someone should be here to greet you!" In America, Hannah decided, Alice would have been one fast talking cheerleader.

"… Um. What?"

"Stupid Alice!" Her forehead was in her hand again before Hannah could stop her. "You must think I'm utter rubbish."

"I don't think anything of you, thus far, except that you speak way too quietly and quickly."

"And you're far too loud!" she burst out, then cringed at her accidental insult, but only for half a second before Hannah too burst out laughing.

"I know! It's like all these places have an echo. I'm so loud!" She sized up Alice, sitting there giggling like a little bell, and decided she would very much like to be her friend. Alice seemed to reach a similar conclusion, for, not a minute later, Alice grabbed her hand and began to pull her up the stairs.

"You're all wet! Oh, but I bet your bag is too. Quick, if we get you changed, well, we'll miss tea but maybe we can sneak off for a bit of shopping before anyone notices we're gone, and I can fill you in on the whole torrid family history." She pulled Hannah into a classy, forest green room and threw open a wardrobe. "This is my room, of course. You can wear something of mine, since, I'd assume, all your things will be drenched!"

"What about the kids-?" but Hannah stopped short as she stared into Alice' wardrobe. As she gaped into its overflowing contents—chocked full of designer silks, smooth cashmere and the softest leather known to mankind, she decided she liked Alice very much indeed!

* * *

><p>While Hannah was being wrangled into a pair of £400 jeans that were two sizes too small, Samuel Ashton was in a whole other version of hell.<p>

"Friday's ball for your brother's birthday is shaping up fabulously!" the woman gushed, half her face obscured by a hat so absurd that Sam felt it would have been more demure to wear an actual living peacock on one's head. "Of course, you'll be bringing Cynthia? I've been hoping ever so long that your Aly would ask my Alice, but it's not too late yet!" She crossed her fingers in joking hope, but her one visible eye spoke of such desperation that Sam felt his skin crawl. Reason number 1,276 why Aly could not marry Alice Kent: Lady Worthington.

Speaking of which, Aly appeared not seven seconds after this statement and slapped his arm brotherly over Sam's shoulder. "My cousin is coming this way, I suggest you make your escape quickly," he muttered into Sam's ear quietly, before whisking Lady Worthington into another one of his long chats about why the Scottish countryside is the most beautiful in the world.

Sam looked up and sure enough Cynthia Bronson was making a beeline for his odd little group. He downed his glass of whisky, and slipped away behind Aly's broad shoulders. Oh sweet Jesus. Cynthia was harder to shake than the love bites she'd left across his neck. Sure she was pretty fucking gorgeous—stick thin, willowy, perfectly coiffed hair in every region of her body, but why settle for one beautiful girl when you have an entire nation of them just crawling at your feet. Sam wasn't like his brother, picking a nice steady girl that looks good in a tiara was harder than it looked—it meant you never got to shag the crazy fucking gymnast or your riding instructor in the stables.

So, while the entire country—grandmother included—had decided early in his life that Cynthia Bronson and her father's giant wallet would be his spouse of choice, Sam had not yet satiated his appetite chocked full of the limber and the desperate.

As Sam found refuge behind a rather oddly misplaced hydrangea, another whisky having mysteriously ended up in hand, he felt—rather obtusely—that he had managed to seek shelter from the storm.

"What are you doing hiding behind that bush, Samuel?"

Turns out, Sam is normally pretty fucking wrong.

"Hullo Cynthia," he morosely sidestepped the plant and faced her shining yellow eyes and insanely tanned face. While Cynthia was very beautiful, upon closer inspection, he always felt a bit overwhelmed by the amount of makeup she wore. She looked great naked though, he had to concede. He wondered if when they got married she'd let him have his way with her with a bag on her head?

She took a long, delicate sip of her tea, calculating her next move carefully. Sam too was calculating: how best to get away. He saw Aly not too far away, but Aly held a shit-eating grin and was most decidedly not looking in his direction—perhaps helping Sam escape once was enough for one afternoon. Where was His Royal Baldness when you needed him? Couldn't he proclaim a royal restraining order, effective until the day of Sam's doom (aka marriage)? How come the smug son of a bitch was only around to chastise and never to help? Although, he really did still owe him for the whole… marriage debacle.

"Were you avoiding me, Samuel? Is that why you were behind the bush?" Cynthia watched him rake his eyes over the room over her perfectly poised teacup.

"Of course not, Cynthia. And, rather, it's a hydrangea." He flashed her one of his dimples—just one to keep her wanting more. This was the biggest weapon in his arsenal. Or rather, second. The actual biggest was the word "princess" slipped casually into almost any conversation. ("No, no you really shouldn't have to. No princess I know has to retrieve her own dog's shit.")

"Then why are you hiding back here?"

"Grandmamma is on the war-path, Cynthia. Really not everything I do is an expression of utter loathing towards you." But, rather everything he did was an expression of fatal inevitability and an unexpressed loathing. There was a key wording difference there.

Cynthia jutted out her bottom lip and pouted prettily. She'd most likely been practicing the "pretty pout" since year one—or perhaps they taught it in school—but Cynthia's was well-worn and broken in.

"You're always so rude to me, Samuel, and really I don't understand why."

_Because I hate you?_ sat willfully at the tip of Sam's tongue.

"You're reading too much into it, Cynthia. Really I have no feelings for you whatsoever— Oh look, there's Uncle Trescott; I really must say hello." And before Cynthia's anger could register more that a "harrumph" of expression, Sam had downed his whisky yet again and strode purposefully off in the direction of the loo.


	3. Something Douchey This Way Comes!

_Some people seem kind of worried that this isn't much of a Pride and Prejudice Fic. And I realize this must be because Sam is not much of a Darcy. Well, one can only hope he'll rise to the occasion, although I seriously doubt it. But I assure you (despite that I have changed the names of characters and their relationships, I will be trying to follow a basic P&P plotline. But no one wants to read the same damn story over and over again, though right? So I'm changing this up and doing it my way! It's more fun for me._

___Hoping to update again this week... Don't hold me to that, but I'm pretty excited for you guys to meet my versions of Lydia and Kitty and possibly... Charlotte!_

An American Girl in London

Chapter 3

Something Douchey This Way Comes!

As retarded as it may sound, Hannah Argos felt like a complete and utter princess. That or a flaming prat. It was hard to tell which, but whichever justified the purchase of a £30,000 Chanel gown, made her very fucking happy.

"You have to get it, you just have to," Alice was gushing, staring at her in the three-way mirror, her eyes as big as the saucers at the hella freaking nice tea shop they'd just had lunch in.

Hannah stepped down off the literal pedestal, the Harrods employees all looking at her—not with the scorn they'd worn as her and Alice had swept through the place, tugging out their dream dresses like giggling teenagers—but as a potential sale.

"I don't have this kind of money, Alice!"

Alice scoffed. "Of course you do. Or rather Auntie Franny does."

Hannah rolled her eyes, wanting to shake some sense into Alice. "You're crazy." Hannah turned to head back into the plush fitting room.

"No really! You'll need it for the ball." Alice called out just as Hannah was entering her room and swinging the curtain closed. "Aunt Franny would never let you go unless you were dressed in your finest!"

Hannah reopened the curtain, turning her back to Alice so she could undo the endless seam of silk buttons. "No way is there actually a ball—" Hannah stopped and wondered what the hell kind of fucked up fairytale she'd gone and wandered into. "Of course there's a ball." What the hell kind of world was this?

Alice sighed and finished the buttons and Hannah swept back into her fitting room. "Of course there's a ball. And you'll have to go and look fab so you won't look like a total knob when Aunt Franny introduces you to your future husband!"

What? Hold the fucking phone. Hannah popped her head back out of the curtain, half of her tank top on. Alice was still mumbling away about "eligible bachelors" or some other Victorian nonsense. "Alice. Back the fuck up." Alice stopped immediately and looked at her, still all wide-eyed and innocent. "What's this about me having a husband?"

Alice grinned sweetly. Sickly-sweetly. "You don't have to actually marry anyone, but once Aunt Franny tries to matchmaker—as she inevitably will—you just need to play along."

Hannah lifted a single, recently threaded eyebrow. "And why do I have to do this?"

Alice's smile grew into a grimace, her voice rose three octaves. "So she won't try to set me up with Duke Herrington again?"

Hannah chuckled a throaty noise that made the lingering shop girls raise their lips in disgust. Really, how do such undignified persons come into money these days? These Americans really must straighten out this upward-mobility complex—money comes with breeding (or in the shop girls' cases, marriage).

"And why don't you like that?" Hannah dropped the curtain and finished putting back on her shirt. When she was greeted only with silence she hopped her way forcefully back into Alice's loaned pair of designer jeans and called back, "It wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that you're in love with a one Alistair McLeod?"

Hannah could feel the room heat up from Alice's blush even through the curtain that separated them, and after she'd wedged her feet into Alice's boots and wobbled back out into the shop, the look on Alice's face proved her suspicions.

"And what's so wrong with Aly? Not well gentrified or titled enough for your dear aunt?" Hannah handed a waiting shop girl the dress and Alice immediately handed over her aunt's credit card before Hannah could even protest the absurdity of it.

"Nothing is wrong with him, of course." Alice then did something Hannah thought only happened ironically or in the movies, she audibly sighed. "He's perfect."

Hannah did that horrific throat chuckle again. "Oh sweet Jesus, please tell me you aren't real."

Alice shook herself out of it, and signed the little digital device the shop girl handed her and retrieved the credit card. "It's not that Aunt Franny doesn't approve. In fact, she'd probably cry from happiness, it's that Aly is in a whole other realm than me."

"He's out of your league?" Hannah scoffed. "Alice, you're like one of the top five most beautiful people I've ever seen. Celebrities included."

Alice grinned happily. "Well thank you, dear. But I don't mean physically. I mean he's ninth in line for the throne and my mother is a grade school teacher. It would be quite the scandal."

"That shit's for real?" Hannah asked as Alice led her to the ornate chocolate room after directing the shop girls on delivering Hannah's new dress to the mini-mansion.

Alice nodded gravely. "I'm perfectly serious. It's why I live with Aunt Franny to begin with—so I can make an advantageous match." She forlornly requested a box of truffles from the nearest counter, bought and shoved them into Hannah's hand before Hannah could even speak. "Aly would be too advantageous. Plus, I think he's betrothed to a Cadbury."

"How does that make any sense? Didn't one of the princes just marry a commoner?" Hannah bit into one of the truffles and felt her entire mouth melt at the quality of chocolate. Never, ever in her entire life had she tasted something so delicious.

"Common? Hardly! Her family has three summer cottages!"

Hannah hit her palm into her head. "Oh, of course. Silly me. How could I forget?"

"Really. Do try to keep up, Hannah." Both girls peeled over in laughter. "Now, shall we go see if the girls are back from riding lessons?" And with that, Alice pulled her out of the calm, happiness that is Harrods and into the awaiting thunderstorm that is Kate and Louise.

* * *

><p>Sunday evening for Sam was spent in a haze of fine whisky and beautiful women. This wasn't too far from how Sam spent most nights. People asked him if the burden of fame grew weary upon him. He wondered if these were the same people that didn't enjoy having sex. They sounded like utter assholes to him, no matter what their excuse for such civilized drudgery.<p>

"Get up, you slave of Neolithic horror."

Bright lights. Burning. "Shit. Bugger. Fuck off." Sam rolled over in his bed, shielding his life from the awful digestive regurgitation that was about to take place.

Soft male hands shoved a gold plated bin at him. Yes, this was his life, heaving into a golden garbage can that had been handed to him by the future king.

"Good night?"

Sam lifted his head and peered into the face of his smirking older brother.

"Worth all of this? Really, Samuel."

"Shut the fuck up, you fascist Nazi," Sam growled, shoving his head back into the puke filled bucket.

"Fascists and Nazis are not the same thing, Samuel. Maybe if you hadn't failed out of your second military school for sleeping with the instructor, you would know that."

Sam looked up, his face plastered with his best shit-eating grin. "I love a girl in uniform."

George forcibly yanked the bucket away from Sam and set it aside for some lucky servant to retrieve later. "Must you be such a public disgrace?"

"We're not in public, dear brother." Sam fell back heavily onto his down pillows. He was in for a long day.

"What will—"

"'Everyone in the fucking world say?'" Sam finished with a mocking tilt. "Has it ever occurred to you, George, that I just don't give a shit what everyone has to say?"

George shook his head sadly. "Grandmother would like to speak with you."

"Tell her to send me a goddamn telegram." Sam rolled into a more comfortable position and settled himself to go back to sleep.

"Really, Sam. When are you going to become a functional member of society?" George rubbed his sadly baldhead. His overgrown eyebrows knit together, watching his drunken younger brother waddling at the edge of a precipice.

"I thought the whole point was that we were above society, George."

"Then you missed the point." George rose to leave the room. "My birthday party is Friday. Please try to be presentable."

"I'll do my best not to fuck it up like I do everything else," Sam growled, rolling over to watch his brother retreat.

"I'm forever at the mercy of your gratitude," George shouted back across the gilded room ironically. He then grinned at his lost baby brother and let himself out, instructing the nearest maid to wake Sam at half-past and retrieve the vomit from his chambers.


	4. When You Wish Upon A Something

An American Girl in London

Chapter 4

When You Wish Upon A Something

By the time Hannah and Alice returned to what shall hereby be deemed "La Chateau," the girls had indeed finished their riding lessons and were mid-hair pulling session over the latest doll to catch Kate's fancy.

"Mine, mine!" Louise screamed at a pitch that really shouldn't be uttered by a four year old, while Kate sobbed loudly on the floor, unable to comprehend at the age of two her sister's determination to take everything she had.

"Oh girls, mummy will buy you a new one. Don't worry!" Lady Worthington said sweeping into the room with affected grace and trying not to step on her still-fighting daughters as she sidled up to a mildly horrified Alice and a wildly horrified Hannah. She pecked Alice daintily on the cheek and turned to study Hannah as if inspecting her latest Tiffany lamp.

Hannah tried very hard to take her all in without a grin or a giggle. She was definitely a sight to behold, still dressed from tea with peacock feathers sticking every which way out of her hair and a trail of gaudy diamonds leading up both her arms. She had a forced, showy quality that made it very clear to anyone with any semblance of sense that she had married into her money and title, and not inherited it. Hannah however was still new to this world of glitz and pomp, and wildly baffled by the fact that someone would wear shoes with a three-inch platform without any trace of irony.

Lady Worthington studied Hannah, taking in her too too-tight jeans and other objects she'd borrowed from Alice, her hair slightly fluffy from the rain upon her curly mane of unruly catastrophe. At long last, Lady Worthington grinned. "Yes. You'll do wonderfully!" Without further ceremony, she enveloped Hannah into the most motherly hug Hannah had experienced in her whole life, crushing Hannah's face against her rather large brassiere. "We'll find you a very nice beau indeed!"

"Beau? I don't want a beau…" Hannah replied, thoroughly confused.

"Nonsense," Lady Worthington made her way briskly out of the foyer, indicating for Alice and Hannah to follow. "Every single, young lady must be in want of a beau!" She swung open a pair of double doors almost exactly like a scene out of some movie somewhere, and grinned into the dining room before leading her two ducklings across it and into the stainless steel kitchen.

Hannah followed, Alice wandering happily along behind her, taking in the crystal chandeliers and the ripe, plush wallpapers, trying to balance in the boots Alice had loaned her across the disgustingly thick carpets. She caught up with lady Worthington in the kitchen and rolled her eyes at even its immaculate qualities. She had quickly learned that these people weren't exactly ones for subtlety. "I'm not much of a lady, Lady."

Lady Worthington turned and faced her with a quick and loud cackle. "Ha! And she has wit! And people said an American was a waste of time."

"I may be American, but I can still hear you speaking about me directly in front of me," Hannah replied as Lady Worthington continued her brisk tour without batting an eye. "And what do you mean 'waste of time'?"

"It is believed that no respectable male of royal breeding would even waste his time dating an American," Lady Worthington explained, still walking briskly around her house. "But you'll prove them wrong, I just know it. We'll find you a most advantageous match."

Hannah stopped dead in her tracks. Holy shit, what had she gotten herself into? Alice noticed her panic and quickly soothed her with a hand on her shoulder and a whispered, "Don't worry. She's harmless, really. It's just a bit of a pet project for her."

"I didn't know 'Royal Matchmaker' was an actual job title."

Alice grinned. "Of course it is. Royals even have someone to wipe their bums!"

The two girls peeled into laughter, not noticing that Lady Worthington had long ago left the room. They shuffled quickly along to catch up.

Not much later, Hannah and the other nanny ("Really? Who needs two nannies!" she'd said, but Lady Worthington had just replied unblinkingly, "If we didn't have two, how could one ever go on holiday?"), Gertie, were wrestling Kate and Louise into the highchairs in the stainless steel kitchen.

"So how are you enjoying your first day in Britain?" Gertie asked, pulling with all her might to buckle the highchair strap before Kate could wriggle free again.

"It's a bit…" Louise bit her on the hand and demanded chocolate for dinner… "Overwhelming…"

Gertie laughed and finally got the buckle into place, stepping back with a sigh of relief. "Yes, Lady Franny is a bit much, but she means well."

"Is she serious about this whole… husband thing?" Hannah asked tentatively.

Gertie tilted her head slightly to the side and grinned and slightly crooked-toothed smile, reminding Hannah for the 1,000th time that she wasn't in America anymore. She was pretty average, with a large round face and gray eyes set within mousy hair. (Lady Worthington had described her as "plain," but Hannah was quickly growing fond of Gertie, regardless of her looks. She found her to be the most level-headed and sane person she'd met so far in all of England, Alice excluded.)

"Theoretically, I suppose," Gertie said. "The last nanny did marry a Count. But she just likes to think she has a hand in these things. And she likes to see us happy. Quite a lovely woman, once you get past the screeching." Gertie swung around the kitchen and pulled out the Lasagna the cook (Of course there's a cook!) had left waiting in the oven, and began to cut it into fine pieces for the girls.

"No, no, no! I want chocolate!" Louise wailed at the top her lungs. Apparently screeching was a family trait.

"So I don't have to do the whole ball gown and waltzing thing?" Hannah asked in relief.

Gertie chuckled again. "Of course you do! Did you not buy a dress?"

"This is some fucked up fairytale," Hannah declared, falling into one of the kitchen chairs in defeat and utter exhaustion.

"The ball is Friday, love." Gertie handed the girls their plates and smirked happily. "Just wait until you meet Prince Charming."

* * *

><p>Sam was in fucking misery. He leaned his head against his mirror and wished upon the God he didn't actually believe in that her could trade this fucking ball for a whisky and a blowjob.<p>

Did he have to go? Sure, it was his only brother's birthday and he was already up shit creek with the entirety of his family, but surely there was an alternative to forced socialization with obnoxious socialites to a shitty band and the strict orders not to make a fucking fool of himself.

A metal flask was nudged towards him, prodded into his arm.

"Ye look like ye need a drink, your highness."

"Shut the fuck up, you useless Scot." Sam grinned to himself and pulled himself out of his mope just in time to take a long drag from Aly's flask and hand it back to him.

"Old Pulteney, 21," Aly declared as Sam felt the shocks of the salty single malt sweep through him, lifting his spirits instantly. "Why so miserable? Finally realizing you're a bloody waste of space?"

Sam scoffed. "At least I'm not wearing a skirt."

Aly looked down at his tartan kilt with full dress—furry sporran, tartan flashes on his thick wool socks. "I like 'ye. Shows off me sexy arse." Aly did a mock-twirl and took another drag on his flask before tucking it back into his sporran. "Forgot to wear my fancy knickers tonight. Think I can make the old bag blush?"

"That's my grandmother you're talking about," Sam chastised but was chuckling to himself, as he grabbed his bowtie and began to thread it while watching himself in the mirror.

"Watch yourself, baby brother," George said from the doorway, before prancing up to Sam and taking over bowtie duties on his behalf. He had it tied perfectly in a matter of seconds. "Now are you going to be on your best behavior tonight?" George asked looking into his dark, lifeless eyes. "Or do I have to ask Aly to babysit you?"

"Right-o!" Aly said mockingly and tipped his flask at the two brothers from where he was lounging on a chair with his legs crossed to prevent flashing his manly parts to a large portion of the royal family.

"Like he's a bloody good influence!" Sam pouted, indignant that his brother had come to lecture him once again. It was a fucking ball, not the apocalyptic occurrence like everyone was making it out to be!

"Never led ye wrong, your highness!" Aly took another swig from his flask.

"You know what they say," George said pompously, before grinning madly. "Never trust a ginger."

"Fock yeh!" Aly growled before ruffling his Nordic, ginger hair and grinning his toothy grin.

George turned back on Sam. "Please be good, we can't handle another debacle with a—"

"Shut it." Sam slipped out of his disapproving glare and tried to hide his momentary shame. "It's like I can hear Grams literally speaking out of your mouth."

"Literally?" George asked, his disapproval growing, but tinged with amusement.

"Don't be a bloody asshole," Sam muttered, interrupting his grammatical monologue before it could begin.

George shook his head and smiled as Sam slid on his coat. "Have fun, wankers." He nodded happily to Aly and left the room as quickly as he'd entered while Aly and Sam shouted a "Happy Birthday" to him in his wake.

Aly stood from his chair and helped Sam straighten his jacket. "He's right, yeh know. Yeh need to stop being such a utter fock-up."

"Oh," Sam threw him off and began to make his exit from the calm and into the ball from hell. "Go screw a sheep."

* * *

><p><em>I wanted to post this, but the thing wouldn't let me log in!<em>

_Anyway… We're getting somewhere here, just somewhat slowly. This Ball is our next chapter and obviously at the Ball they will meet! So… get excited for that. The bad news is I have no idea when I'll be able to post again, but I am not opposed to bribery. Just wanted to make that clear. ;)_

_Are you starting to see who all of the characters are? If not, please let me know and I'll post a character list for you guys. It's just my character list would maybe give a few things away from the future. Anyway though, I have a lot of fun in store for this story._

_Let me know if you're reading. It's very encouraging. Now, I'm off to the Mardi Gras parades so I should probably put on some pants! Bye friends!_


	5. Keep Calm and Drink More

An American Girl in London

Chapter 5

Keep Calm and Drink More

Hannah settled into life at La Chateau surprisingly quickly, considering it was a life she'd never wished to have. It didn't take her long to adjust to their array of gourmet, vegetarian meals cooked by a professional chef. Or to endless days of shopping with Alice until she and Lady Franny ("Save the pleasantries for Her Majesty, dear. I really don't give a rat's bum, but could you ask Louise to stop eating all my posh candles? They're in frightful shape, love.") were entirely pleased with her wardrobe ("Really, dear. You look as if you've been stealing from the destitute in what you're wearing. Just think of my poor reputation!"). Or to long runs through Hyde Park with the Kate and Louise miraculously, quietly sleeping in their pram ("I've never seen them this quiet before. Are you sure they're not dead?"). Or long late-night chats with Gertie in the secret kitchen tucked in the back of the house over a pint of Ben and Jerry's ("Don't tell lady Franny, she'll have an utter fit if we don't fit into our dresses!").

So as Hannah's first week in the UK edged to a close, she found herself almost coming to peace with the strange alternate universe she had wandered into.

That was until the day of the ball.

The house was in hysterics: Louise and Kate crying full-pelt (although, that wasn't a recent development); the parade of hairstylists, fashion consultants, makeup artists, and something called a "Zen Passage Seeker" that constantly wheeled through the house first for Lady Franny then for each of her girls respectively; the momentary wail of dread when Lady Franny couldn't get her dress to fit before the fashion consultants realized they'd brought it in an extra size, just in case. Finally, things came together and calm settled upon La Chateau for one brief and shining moment.

Or at least as close as La Chateau would ever come to calm.

Hannah had expected to have enjoyed this entire experience a bit more, for what girl—low maintenance or not—hadn't always wanted to partake in a movie makeover montage? But to be honest, the hairstylist had pulled her up-do too tight ("Although it looks amazing!") and coated her entire head in a scalding wax, the gorgeous dress's train was just a tad too long and she had to pace the hallway for an hour on Lady Franny's orders before she could walk in it without looking like a daft duck, and she now stood in the sitting room with Alice and Lady Franny trying to figure out how to breathe in these complex knickers.

"You all look smashing, my darlings!" Lady Franny kept announcing randomly throughout the day, trying to reassure all parties involved, but none more than herself. She now was perched delicately in the sitting room, only twitching slightly—which Alice reassured Hannah was perfectly normal for her. Not much later Gertie wandered in with the girls, both surprisingly not screeching and dressed in adorable matching, pale pink dresses. Gertie too looked very nice, even if Lady Franny had hesitated slightly before agreeing to allow her attendance.

They all sat in wait—Hannah in a very uncomfortable wait due to the knickers and trying to preoccupy herself with extracting information from Alice and Lady Franny about the prospective guests and all their sordid back-story—for Lord Worthington to arrive from his financial conference in Munich. Hannah had yet to meet Lord Worthington, but was far more nervous about Lady Franny fainting on the spot than she could be about him not taking a liking to her.

It was an agonizing hour before Lord Worthington finally threw open the doors to his own sitting room, a bottle of French Champagne that cost more than Hannah's father's yearly earnings grasped in one hand and the butler following closely at his heels with a tray of champagne flutes to accompany it.

"Alas, my dear wife, you may take a deep breath, for I have arrived," Lord Worthington announced with a grin across his lined face. He was a fair bit older than Hannah had suspected, possibly pushing 60, but he had a jovial, portly quality to him that immediately indicated to Hannah that he was nothing to fear. He happily leaned into his wife for a welcome home kiss, but she turned away and harrumphed her clear displeasure with him.

"Lot of good that does me now," she sulked. "We've practically missed the whole ball. We should scarcely even bother to attend."

Lord Worthinton grinned even wider and fell onto a love seat, swinging his feet up happily onto a settee until he was lounged quite comfortably. "Suit yourself, I'd very much enjoy an evening at home."

Lady Franny practically turned purple she was so displeased. "Lord Worthington get your arse out of that bloody chair and accompany me to this dratted ball or else I will forever be cross at you."

"Well, there's the cockney fireball I married!" Worthington announced before swinging out of his position just as easily as he'd fallen into it and standing once again among the ladies. "Now, who would like a glass of champagne?" He quickly popped the bottle and poured his wife a glass. "What do you say, love? A little bubbly to take the edge off?"

Lady Franny continued to sulk, but took the glass anyway and began to sip its contents with relish until finally her scowl was replaced with the beginnings of a smile.

Worthington doled out glasses to Alice and Gertie with brief conversations of hello, before his eyes finally landed on Hannah and lit with surprise at her presence. "Ah! One I don't yet know. You must be Fran's latest pet project. Hannah, I believe? Quick, what talents do you bring to the dating pool?"

Hannah grinned, already quite liking Worthington. "Insatiable sarcasm and brash bluntness."

"Smashing, a true American!" Worthington laughed good-naturedly and rewarded her with her own glass of champagne. "My Fran does love a challenge!" He tipped his glass to her.

She tipped her own back. "If there is one thing I can be, a challenge will most assuredly be it."

He chuckled again before they completed their silent toast with a sip and Hannah felt herself enveloped in a blanket of deliciousness. "Shit! This is good," she almost sputtered, holding her glass away from herself to better examine her flute.

"A girl of fine tastes," Worthington agreed, quickly pegging Hannah as his own favorite amongst his house of fine ladies. "If you play your cards right, I'll introduce you to my fine whisky collection—"

"Bryson! The ball!" Lady Franny cried, having just downed the contents of her glass and set it forcefully upon the glass table.

"Alas!" Worthington mocked shock and popped himself on the forehead with his palm. "How dare you distract me so wickedly, young lady. We have a very important ball to be getting to!"

Lady Franny swept out of the room in a tizzy, leaving the rest to follow as she puttered out the door muttering about her "insufferable husband" and her "poor, beleaguered reputation!"

* * *

><p>Walking into her first royal ballroom, for Hannah, was a bit like walking directly into the sun: very difficult to see and highly overwhelming.<p>

Everything seemed to be on fire, the room sparkled with suck intensity. Guests were milling about in their finery—the room still not entirely full despite Lady Franny's wails about their insufferable tardiness. Kate and Louise were dropped off quickly in the nursery by Gertie and Hannah—who couldn't help but smile at the miniaturized version of the party that was taking place for the younger crowd—before the two met up with Alice, Lady Franny and Worthington in the entrance hall.

"Who's here, who's here?" Lady Franny kept muttering, trying to check the faces of every person as they entered for someone of import, while Alice and Gertie started a running commentary on each character that passed their way.

"That's the Duke of Kent who just left his wife of 35 years for a much younger woman. A model. I'm shocked Her Majesty even permitted his invite, but I suppose she couldn't revoke it. That would be very rude, indeed," Alice said with a modest blush for even momentarily thinking a moderately negative thought about the Queen, and beginning to apologize profusely for such a slip to Hannah, who didn't really give a shit.

Hannah just snorted and pretended she was back at home in DC watching this entire affair on her television.

"Good graces," Worthington said, tipping his hat to the ladies. "I really must be going before all of this match-making business begins to prevent my alcohol consumption. A man has only so much time for useless preoccupations and must prioritize to his finest." He winked at Hannah, which she took to silently wish her luck as she chuckled at his comment. "And with that, I wish you ladies a pleasant evening—" he turned away quickly and into a nearby gentleman—"Gerard, care for a dram?" He scuttled off quickly, but no one besides Hannah seems to feel his absence, and she felt it only momentarily—for it wasn't long before she spotted a familiar face descending the stairs on the opposite side of the ballroom.

"Oh!" she was so shocked at recognizing him that she almost tumbled out her far too high heels. "Alice! Look. It's Aly!"

Alice immediately hopped out of her mortified reverie and began searching the room wildly with her eyes. "Where?" she said, a bit too eagerly for subtlety, but Lady Franny was still preoccupied with scoping out all of the young gentlemen to cross her path. Finally Alice's eyes found Aly, and like a magnet the two of them connected, Aly suddenly being pulled towards their group by a force outside his control: his own feet.

Hannah smiled happily to herself—perhaps Lady Franny would see one of her girls make and even better match than even she could dream of! Although, in his full Scottish dress and mane of ginger hair, she could understand how anyone would be reluctant to allow their family member to marry that.

As Hannah watched Aly's attempt to beeline towards their group (or rather, Alice), politely excusing himself to every person that tried to snag his progress, she couldn't help but notice a scowling, miserable individual that followed never more than a pace behind him. Miserable he most assuredly was (he looked like he had been dragged to this party by fishhooks), but he made up for it with shag of dark hair and a lopsided bowtie that indicated to Hannah he belonged here almost as much as she did. Hannah couldn't help but be instantly intrigued by his deep eyes and hassled air of indifference that seemed like a lump of coal in a field of diamonds, but coal had always suited Hannah much more than diamonds.

She nudged Gertie with her elbow, too scared to break the spell that had spanned the entire hall between Alice and Aly. She didn't feel much need to whisper, but still leaned closer to Gertie and asked her, "Who is that disheveled dude using MacLeod like an invisibility cloak?"

Gertie frowned and quickly found the large ginger with her eyes before locating the taller, brooding fellow behind him. "That one with the sulking air of repulsion and the disturbingly arrayed fringe?"

Hannah nodded. "Yes, the miserable one, please."

Gertie winced. "Oh poor Hannah!"

"What?"

As Gertie continued to bite her lip and look excruciatingly sorry for Hannah, Aly finally broke through the crowd and crossed directly to their group, grinning wickedly at an incandescently pink Alice, before pulling Hannah happily into his arms, as if being mauled by a bear.

This commotion was enough to break Lady Franny out of her trance, who whirled back upon her girls with a gasp and a, "Why Alasdair I didn't know you knew my latest girl?"

Aly growled his happiness in Hannah's ear (perhaps he was using words, but it sounded like growls to Hannah, and the heavy scent of Scotch didn't help make him any more decipherable) before finally releasing her and turning to the questioning looks of the three other ladies and one sulking best friend.

"Yeh. We're ole pals, Hannah ey aye!"

Hannah couldn't help but smile, glad that chance had brought her back to her one other UK acquaintance. "We practically shared a womb," Hannah deadpanned.

Aly chuckled again, before turning to the very gentleman of Hannah's scrutiny and clasping him roughly on the back, before Lady Franny could faint for fear of her reputation. "Ane this young lad is me best frien', Sam," he said to Hannah, practically shoving him towards her.

"Hey." Sam stopped himself before he was battered into her by Aly's push, and yanked a hand through his fringe.

"Hi." Hannah tried not to let every emotion she felt rattle across her face, but it was hard for her not to at least blush at the sheer normality she felt from his every gesture. She'd wanted a friend—someone not swept up in this cocaine fairytale—and she relished in the possibility that she'd finally found him. Plus, she couldn't help but notice, he was cute too!

But before Hannah could think even another thought, Gertie was nudging her pointedly in the side. She wheeled around, slightly putout by the interruption only to find all three of her companions bowing delicately—was that a curtsy?

Aly grinned and finally pointed Hannah in the right direction, still too American to figure this one out on her own. "Sam's a bloody Prince, Hannah. At least preten' te bow."

Hannah really shouldn't have been as shocked as she was—hadn't she been wandering around down here in Wonderland for almost a week now. Of course he was the prince—couldn't anyone be sane?

"Holy fuck. You have got to be kidding me."

* * *

><p>As expected, the ball was a total bore. Sam rolled his eyes at the predictable, stodgy group of titled shit-heads he was being forced to socialize with… yet again.<p>

He wasn't sure he'd make it through another evening of this tedium and they hadn't even been escorted into the ballroom yet. Instead they were all still milling around the entrance hall, like a geriatric herd of sheep. Mercifully, Aly was scanning the crowd, allowing Sam the literal high ground at the top of the grand staircase where at least he wasn't wrong in assuming himself above everyone, but only in one regard.

"Oye! 'Dhere she is!" Aly suddenly declared, tucking his flask (second flask? Surely that thing was emptied at least once by now!) back into his sporran and beginning to briskly descend the stairs.

"Who? What?" Sam, struggled not to let his displeasure show, but he didn't struggle very hard, just followed his best mate in confusion through the crowd. Random groups of people would stop Aly, set on dragging him into another conversation about Scottish sharecropping, before they would note Sam scowling from behind his shoulder and relinquish the poor Scot in order to not be cursed with such proximity to Sam.

Eventually Sam parted the crowd like the Red Sea and was left to follow Aly, out of morbid curiosity, as he came tumbling through the crowd and into the arms of a moderately tall girl with a tumble of dark hair and an air of adamant discomfort. Aly's familiarity with such an unknown face set Sam a bit out of sorts—should he know her from somewhere?

When Aly hauled him forward, forcing him out of his reverie of countless ex-bad-decisions and almost fully against her body, Sam couldn't help but scowl to himself at his inability to recognize if he had or had not already slept with her.

Sam really didn't like repeat offenders…

"Sam's a bloody Prince, Hannah. At least preten' te bow."

Well that solved that—he had definitely not slept with her, but now he had a whole new mystery to contemplate: How the hell did she not know who he was? And to top that one off with something even more shocking—

"Holy fuck. You have got to be kidding me."

Never in all his life had Samuel Ashton been so shocked so many times in a row, yet alone by a single person! Despite the fact that everything about her seemed somewhat unremarkable (designer dress, foreign accent, overly styled cascade of hair, blah blah blah. You name it, he'd seen it. Seen it 1,000 times), Sam still felt an ominous chill settle throughout him. It was a chill that sent his skin prickling and his mind reeling. He knew it well.

Suddenly his abstract haze of boredom retreated and was replaced with the thrill of making a horrible, dreadful mistake.

Naively, he was excited, his entire body tingling with this rebellious exhilaration. Who knew what kind of ass he'd make of himself this time, whose life he would screw up for all eternity! Oh, that tingle set him spinning into a delirium of joyful possibilities!

But really. How was Sam to know that this was the girl that would change everything?

#

_Alas! They have finally met! I knew I could do it eventually! Sorry you had to wait so long. Now the P&P may begin to take shape!_

_To my dear reviewers that made that last chapter the most highly reviewed of them all, I thank you dearly! Especially you, wendywho, who was very right about the pants._

_I had a very good Mardi Gras. I even caught a coconut! (For those of you that don't know, that's good for a year of luck.) But thus far there has been very little luck: Just a broke-down car, a broken bicycle, a parking ticket, a briefly broken phone, and a very angry landlord. But! Such is life! That's why I write these lovely stories for you wonderful people, so you can do that one little act that just completely makes my day!_

_So review because it really means a lot to me and actually helps quite a bit in motivating me to write more for you guys (note: longer chapter!). Plus, it lets me know all the horrible mistakes I've made so far, and all the wonderful things I've gotten right. Or it just tells me that you're really reading, which makes me insanely happy too!_

_(One last thing: to hh, I'm sorry but Hannah will not be getting with Aly. I hope that doesn't let you down too badly, yeah?)_


	6. Love at First FuckUp

An American Girl In London

Chapter 6

Love at First Fuck-Up

"No, no, no! I forbid it!" Lady Worthington began to screech into Hannah's ear, leading her away from a rather baffled member of the royal family by the small of her back, with Gertie following closely in tow.

If you asked Hannah, she wouldn't be unable to tell you clearly what had happened in the fast five minutes. Next thing she knows Alice and Aly have been swept into the ballroom with their arms intertwined and Sam—Prince Sam? What the fuck?—is holding out his arm to her, looking at her as if she were about to bite it off. Before she could do more than eye his strangely crooked elbow and wonder if perhaps she had been slipped methamphetamines at some point in the evening, Lady Franny had descended upon her, effectively slicing through her baffling exchange with Sam with a machete, and was leading her quite forcefully into the ballroom. Screeching, all the while.

"It's not allowed. There's no way. No, no, no, not in my bloody lifetime!" Lady Franny whirled her into a secluded corner of the rapidly filling room (ooh, shiny things everywhere!), and was practically pouncing on Hannah in her vehemence. "Just think of my reputation, Hannah!"

"With you, I can hardly think of anything else, Lady Franny," Hannah protested. When confused and cornered, it always brought out the rebel in Hannah. She didn't like being trapped in the corner. She was always a bit of a fighter, and although she had no idea to what Lady Franny was referring, the fact that it was so adamantly forbidden made Hannah secretly want to do it. In fact, she wanted to do it really bad.

"No, no, no, Hannah," Lady Franny continued to repeat, waggling her finger and announcing each word as if speaking to her own sobbing daughters after they'd started playing "skydiver" by jumping off the dining table. Gertie still stood in her shadow; she too was nodding emphatically.

"Excuse me," Hannah stopped her before this madness could go on, by grasping Lady Franny's finger mid-wag, "but what is it that I am not supposed to be doing?"

Lady Franny rolled her eyes in exhaustion, and nearly fell into a faint she was so exasperated. "I don't know what I'm going to do with you! Think of my reputation!"

Lady Franny whirled away long enough for Gertie to step up to the plate and give her a brief Idiots Guide to Royal Gossip. "Samuel Ashton is very thoroughly off-limits, Hannah. He's like a curse upon young ladies."

"What? Like he has herpes?"

Gertie snorted into her palm, trying to hold back her laughter. Hannah couldn't help but grin herself.

"Let's just put it this way, Hannah. I wouldn't say that's out of the question." Gertie's eyes twinkled.

"I get what you're saying," Hannah picked herself up from where she'd fallen against the wall in desperation/fear of Lady Franny. "Don't have sex with the Royals. You don't know where they've been."

"Not if the Queen has anything to say—"

Lady Franny, without fully noticing, swept Gertie out of the way, and was pouncing upon Hannah once again. "He's a dreadful, dreadful boy, that Samuel and it's perfectly forbidden. Do you understand!"

Hannah nodded numbly, for once in her life, fully and completely unable to come up with a smart reply.

"Good!" Within a moment, Lady Franny transformed back into the matronly tornado of bubbliness and desperation that Hannah had become so fond of. She adjusted her bustier and began to scan the crowds eagerly again. "Now, let's go find you a nice young man. Oh look at Alice and Alasdair! Dancing already. I swear to you girls, there'll be wedding bells by Christmas!"

She swung out into the milling crowd and into the proximity of an overdressed woman with a cascade of dark hair so thick that Hannah was sure it must be a wig. "Oh, Lady Phillips," Lady Franny gushed. "Do you see my beautiful niece dancing with that MacLeod! I always knew she must be so beautiful for a reason, although surely it goes unnoticed on that brutish race—"

* * *

><p>When the blunt American was swept away by her overbearing guardian, Sam didn't quite know what to think. Maybe the gods of all creation had at last taken mercy on him and saved him another long night with a desperate girl trying horribly to feel him up in public (the feeling-up part was ok though, he had to admit. It was typically the desperation that Sam didn't enjoy). Whatever it was, it left Sam standing dreadfully alone in the middle on the entrance hall, looking at his still reluctantly proffered arm and wondering (was that a fourth time now?) what the hell had just happened.<p>

"Is that your latest victim, Samuel?" came a wildly amused female voice from behind Sam's shoulder. "It seems you've let her slip away. Perhaps you've finally met your match."

Before Sam could drop his arm back to his side, it had been grasped smoothly by the graceful, elegance of Madeline Grant—never mind, make that Madeline Ashton, Duchess of Canterbury. Sam still had to force himself to make the correction.

Sam began to lead her into the hall, a grin reluctantly sneaking onto his lips. "Haven't you heard, Maddie? Your dear husband has forced me to give up the entirety of the female gender."

"What a very sad boy you must be then, Samuel. Although I must say it's for the good of female-kind. Whatever will you do with yourself?" she grinned and clasped two passing flute of champagne from the tray of a nameless waiter, offering one to Samuel.

"I don't know."

"I'm not too worried about you. I'm sure you'll find a fine bottle of whisky with which you can drown your sorrows and bludgeon your next heroine."

Sam took a long sip and studied his new sister closely, holding back his amusement. To be honest, she'd never be good enough for his brother, no matter how boring and bald George may in fact be, and Sam still didn't entirely trust her, but he couldn't help but thank her silently under his breath at every turn. God, did he fucking owe her big time—she'd gone through a three-ringed circus of hell for him—although she had come out the other side with an iceberg-sized rock weighing down her delicate fingers.

"Really, Sam. We're siblings now. You can stop all the forced guardedness."

"No one's forcing me." It seemed perfectly serious, but to be honest, Sam was beginning to grow quite fond of Madeline. Despite that, he had trouble fully enjoying her company when he knew full well what was coming. Madeline hadn't enjoyed the terms under which her wedding had taken place, and the endless agony he'd put her through behind closed doors was enough to make her slightly embittered towards him. But still—the last thing Sam needed was another goddamn scolding.

She grinned, her sapphire eyes sparking and locking onto his. "I love your brother. I'd do anything for him. It's time you do the same."

"Even _you_ are giving me lectures on propriety."

She grinned. No, in all honestly, Sam forced himself to admit. Madeline was way fucking cooler than that. Plus, she wasn't one of them—not really. And for that he liked her against his own will. She chuckled her adorable little tinkle and her eyes lit on something over his shoulder. "Oooh. Speaking of forbidden women! Here comes your betrothed."

Within seconds, Sam was plotting his escape, knowing perfectly well what was about to take place. But Madeline had an evil streak to her and held him in place by the grasp she maintained on his arm.

"Oh please Maddie!" He almost begged. "Let me go!"

"Why would I do that when this is far more entertaining?" she asked innocently, still rooting him to his spot like a mouse in a trap. "Call it payback, Samuel."

"Samuel! I've missed you dreadfully!" Cynthia squealed, throwing her arms happily around him while Madeline released him smoothly just in time for her grasp to go unnoticed by Cynthia.

"Cynthia. It hasn't even been a week." Before Cynthia could even glare in her direction for more than half a second, Madeline made her silent exit, only leaving behind an amused giggle before she swept off to find her new husband and wish him a happy birthday.

"I know! What a long week!"

She threw her lips onto Sam's trying desperately to open his mouth with her tongue, but he wasn't budging. Eventually she gave up, and covered her disappointment with the beginnings of hysterical whisperings.

"Do you see that dreadful cousin of mine out there with that trash!"

Sam frowned, finally allowing a few of her words to slip through the barrier he normally kept between them for the sake of his own sanity. His eyes suddenly raked the room until he found Aly on the dance floor with none other than Alice Kent, who was, Sam begrudgingly admitted, aglow with the presence of the whirling Scotsman. Reason number 2,347 Aly couldn't marry Alice Kent: Was she always so goddamn happy?

"It's like he enjoys pulling our family name through the mud! Next he'll be inviting her up to Culloden to meet the family! I swear, if Auntie Olivia knew what he's been up to! She's obviously just after our money and title!"

Sam let her rampage drift right through him as his eyes slowly edged across the room and landed on that dense American from earlier. She was in a corner, laughing with a plain-faced girl and seemingly oblivious to his scrutiny. He didn't even know why he allowed his eyes to linger. Surely she wasn't anything special.

He'd definitely been with more beautiful women, and he'd bet anything that if he snapped his fingers right that very instant she'd come strutting over to him and remove all his clothes, hers too while she was at it. Well, that wouldn't be so bad— Sam began to fall into a hazy daydream.

"Samuel! Are you even listening to me?" Cynthia was frowning; her well-worn pout already back in place.

"Yes, you're right, Cynthia. She's completely and utterly dreadful," he allowed himself to repeat, purely out of assumption, but Cynthia seemed satisfied and Sam now felt perfectly at ease to search the room for a better alternative for the evening.

Weird. How had his eyes landed on that strange American once again?

* * *

><p>While the room was boiling, and the music was inane and lame, Hannah had to admit she was having a fair bit of fun that this royal shindig. She'd danced with some chin-dimpled gentleman that kept calling her "Madam." That had been weird. She'd entertained an entire table of portly gentleman all grasping cigars with an anecdote about American politics ("I'm sure you guys know a thing or two about the 1%!") while puffing down a cigar of her own as well, much to their amusement and her own inebriation. On a few occasions, she'd even felt the eyes of a nameless soul, lingering on her just out of notice—not that that had left her just a tiny bit freaked out and uncomfortable.<p>

And now she rested happily, having just danced something called "a reel" with a slightly balding gentleman wearing a coat of what seemed to be red velvet (the things these royals find trendy!) that had been very patient with her as she'd stepped on his toes. Gertie was with her, both huffing, trying to regain their breaths and laughing in mortification in remembrance of Lady Franny's loud speeches about Alice's "child rearing hips."

"Poor Alice!" Hannah chuckled, still wildly amused.

"Indeed!" Gertie puffed before finding her G&T and taking a large gulp.

The two girls fell into a happy silence, before they were interrupted by the distinct growling accent of a familiar Scotsman. Out of instinct Hannah whiled about trying to place the location of her friend, having lost him and Alice to their mutual smiles throughout the night.

"C'mon, Sammy, mate. Give us a dance. Do us a jig. Show us commoners how it's dune!"

"You raging lunatic, leave me to my whisky and my misery before your disgusting cousin finds me and escorts me off the Gretna Green."

Aha! There was where the voice was coming from. A table and a half away was a red-faced Aly, howling in laughter and a grumbling Prince with even messier bangs than she had remembered them being upon their meeting. Despite Gertie's and Lady Franny's adamant warnings, Hannah couldn't help but edge a tiny bit closer to better hear their exchange. What? It was purely out of morbid curiosity, Hannah swore to herself.

"Oh, come dance you sick bastard. Just because ye're up shit creek with the entirety of the United Kingdom doesn't mean ye cae enjoy yourself at least a litt'e."

"Leave me alone, you miserable twat."

Hannah watched, only slightly fascinated, as Sam pushed his bangs out of his face to reveal those flashing baby blues.

Aly just chuckled at Sam's insult. "Miserable? Hardly! I'm dancing with the most beautiful girl in all oe England!"

Hannah smiled. God, had she mentioned how much she loved Aly? She felt a brotherly affection sweep through her body in trickling warmth. Or maybe that was the alcohol.

"Your enthusiasm is contagious," Sam deadpanned, and Hannah couldn't help but chuckle to herself, just slightly loud enough to catch Gertie's attention and clue her in on what Hannah was doing.

But before Gertie could open her big trap and sweep Hannah back into her corner for another scolding, Aly unknowingly interrupted her with the mention of her name.

"Ye could dance with Hannah. Poor lass, seems te hae caught your eye."

Hannah blushed. God, wasn't she just a stupid girl underneath that tough exterior.

"Which one is Hannah again?" Sam asked, nonchalant.

"The American, ye annoying litt'e weasel."

Sam shrugged and downed the contents of his glass. "Have my standards sunk so low these days to make you consider me wasting time on some unremarkable American?"

"You're right," Aly stood up from their table, grinning like a loon. "She's out of ye' league, mate."

Within seconds Aly had departed into the throng of faceless "important" people. Sam sat there miserably staring into his empty glass, fluffed his fringe one more time and lifted his eyes—which on their own accord locked with Hannah's.

Never one to back down (except out of pure fear at a hysterical Lady Franny), Hannah held his gaze with resolute defiance that heated the already boiling ballroom another 3 degrees, at least in her opinion. Finally Sam snapped his eyes away, and raced from his table to find a fuller glass.

"I tried to warn you, Hannah. Samuel Ashton is the epitome of bad news," Gertie apologized, watching her new friend for any signs of distress.

But Hannah just set her jaw and laughed it off. "Let's just thank our lucky stars we don't have to have anything to do with him then." She grinned and found her champagne on the table. "Now… tell me about this herpes epidemic that ransacking the royals."

* * *

><p><em>Missed me? I've missed me. God, where have I been? Is it sad that even I don't know?<em>

_I have some serious writing to do for you guys, but I think the next chapter is going to come a lot easier for me. So that's something to look forward to!_

_Thanks for all the sick reviews! Each and every one of them helped me immensely in finding the massive amounts of effort this chapter seemed to call for. Hope it wasn't a let down for you!_

_Ugh. I wish I could quit my job and move to London with Hannah. I'd tell her not to be so silly, and Samuel to stop being a fucking douche! Oh boys…_


	7. True Booze Conquers Love

An American Girl in London

Chapter 7

True Booze Conquers Love

As Hannah and Gertie peeled over in laughter at the disastrous love life they'd imagined for the young royal prince, Alice bumbled happily onto their table, floating on a cloud of young Scottish love muddled with the aftermath of a top-shelf open bar (say what you will about their pretensions, Hannah had to concede that these royals knew how to throw one hell of a soiree).

"My beautiful friends!" she settled herself happily into the chair beside Gertie and tried her best to cross her ankles in a Lady Franny approved seating style, but gave up quickly and let her knees settle however she so chose. "Isn't this party just wonderful!"

"Alice," Hannah giggled, still a bit giddy from Gertie's comments on the state of Samuel Ashton's more masculine attributes ("Most unladylike! What _would_ Lady Franny say if she could hear us now, Gertie!"), "you're speaking in exclamation marks."

"Yes," Gertie agreed eagerly. "Please try to join us future spinsters in a more sedate manner."

Both girls looked at Alice in their most severe style, hiding their grins like true professionals. Overwhelmed by their solemnity, Alice tried her best to frown so as to not hurt either of her two friends' feelings.

Hannah and Gertie waited until the exact moment that Alice had settled her features into an appropriately miserable expression before they nearly toppled out of their chairs in laughter.

"Shut it!" Alice tried her best to be upset, which was still at least ten times friendlier than most people at their best. "Were you guys taking the piss?"

This only made Hannah laugh harder. "Yes, Alice. We were taking the proverbial piss."

As Alice tried to hide her wild blush and force herself even harder to be angry, Gertie at least attempted to contain her mirth into her napkin, and Hannah bellowed loud and raucous cheers of laughter.

"Ah the horde of merry mongrels has been spotte' aye last!"

"Oh Aly, don't encourage them. They're ruthlessly mocking me and I'm highly offended!" Alice garnered an ally by tugging Aly's hand until he fell happily into the seat beside her, glad to be at her side once again.

"Oh please, Aly!" Hannah hid her giggles and pulled her best Scarlett O'Hara impersonation. "I feel ever so faint. Won't you catch me in your big strong arms and carry me back to the stables to ravage me?"

"Is she mocking us?" Aly asked, turning to a mildly offended Alice. "I can'e tell through that atrocious accent."

All three girls laughed appreciatively. Even Hannah would concede her Southern Belle routine wasn't much up to snuff.

"Speak for yourself. I've noticed you've suddenly become one of the Northern clansmen of times lost. Padding the accent much there, sir?" Hannah asked, one eyebrow raised in challenge.

Aly just grinned and held his glass of Scotch in the air. "Cheers to that, you American wench."

Someone snorted into a glass and Hannah finally realized that Sam had joined their table on her other side, seated quietly in the chair beside her and watching her closely as she frowned at his presence. "Dude. Where did you come from?"

"Hannah!" Alice nearly squealed, so concerned with her friend's reaction—what would Auntie Franny say if she could hear one of them address royalty as such (although, what would Auntie Franny say if she knew Alistair MacLeod's hand was resting quite high up on Alice's thigh under the table at this very moment?).

Aly just turned his head away from them all and bellowed out his laughter from Sam's stricken face at being addressed as such.

"Last I checked, my proper title was not, in fact, '_Dude._'" Sam replied, his face stony.

"What? Now, do you lock me in the tower or cut off my head? I really can't keep up with all these royal affronts. There, there, _Princess_. Alas, I think you'll get over it." Hannah patted his hand lightly in consolation before turning her attention back to the rest of the table. "Who wants another round?" the only response she found was two gaping girls and a chuckling ginger. "No, one? Just me then!" She grinned at the entire table before picking up her skirts and sweeping away.

Now. Where was that damn bar hiding again?

* * *

><p>When that dreadful American left the table Sam could only think to do two things: Take a long drag on his whisky and watch her walk away.<p>

She really did have a most spectacular bottom. Maybe that was why he couldn't bring himself to look away? As a connoisseur of beautiful women, Sam just liked to appreciate them… like modern art or a fine wine. But at the end of the day, he'd never choose wine over whisky and he'd sure as hell never let modern art into his house (ahem. Castle)!

So Sam allowed himself to appreciate her retreat… maybe even a tad longer than was strictly necessary.

"Oh yeah?" he heard his best friend growl from across the table, shooting him a mirthful look that simultaneously conveyed amusement and a warning.

Sam did his best shrug in reply, trying to put across both his nonchalance and disinterest. He was supposed to be a good little boy this evening, although he couldn't help but contemplate the steaming look of ire that Grams would give him if he ever showed up at the castle with a petulant American that couldn't keep her mouth closed.

"Samuel! There you are!" Before he could stop her Cynthia descended upon Hannah's recently vacated chair and threw her arms happily around him in greeting. Her equally nasty (although, thankfully, much more subdued) sister, Diane, had taken the seat on his other side, effectively cornering him at the table.

After she had finished with her painful handling of a nonresponsive Samuel, she finally turned to the rest of the table, who sat watching her in horror, as if she was just noticing their presence.

"Oh, hello there, Alastair," she said then turned herself upon that dreadfully boring Alice, who sat nestled beneath Aly's beefy arms and against his solid chest. She pasted on her most painfully false smile. "And Alice, dear. I'd have thought you'd be back amongst—" the peasants? "—your parents now."

"No, I'm staying with Auntie Franny until—" the girl bit her lower lip. "For the foreseeable future," she finished, ducking her head and blushing. Reason #1,299 why Aly could not marry Alice Kent: she blushes like a character from a goddamned Jane Austen novel.

Cynthia proceeded to pour herself even further over Sam, feigning very thinly that she actually cared about whatever inane thing Alice Kent was blathering on about.

"So, Samuel, we were thinking about going to Bubble after this dreadful party is over with," Cynthia suddenly threw out there, interrupting Alice mid-sentence, and proceeding to study her fingernails as if she were the most bored person in all the world.

"Bubble?" Aly scoffed. Aly hated pseudo-posh clubs in which rich, drunken girls draped themselves over men like clothes. Really, Sam didn't see how anyone _could_ have a problem with that sort of thing. Although, if Cynthia was going to be there, then he'd rather not partake. No fucking way.

"What'd I miss?" the American chose that moment to plonk herself back down at the table, thumping her topped-off glass on the table and falling unceremoniously into the vacant chair beside Cynthia. She looked around quickly. "Hey. Where'd Gertie go?"

Cynthia looked at the mess of a girl sitting directly on her left, her eyes growing wide in horror. "I don't know anyone by the name of… _Gertie,_" she looked as if she had swallowed something that tasted bad just from having such a name pass by her lips.

Hannah frowned and looked at her with puzzlement clear on her face. "I don't think we've met? I'm Hannah." Hannah stuck out a hand for Cynthia to shake, but Cynthia just stuck her nose up a little bit further in the air.

"Yes, you're the American that made _quite_ the impression on Uncle Jeremy."

Hannah laughed happily at the memory. "To be fair, in America, 'pants' just means jeans or shorts or something. Not underwear."

Cynthia stared at her agog.

"Geesh, it's a good thing you're pretty, sweetheart," Hannah muttered, rolling her eyes and deciding, based on Cynthia blatant disapproval, that the two of them would never be BFF (oh, _so_ sad!).

Aly was off chuckling again. Sam had to stifle his own mirth, so impressed was he by the amount of steam coming out of Cynthia's ears.

"This is me cousins, Hannah, beli'e it or not. Cynthia and Diane," Aly finally placated, noticing Cynthia gearing up for a proper fit. "Cynthia. Play nice," he said, addressing his younger cousin.

Alice jumped in there. "Hannah, we were all just thinking that we'd maybe head out to one of the clubs. I know you've been curious about getting out."

Hannah shrugged. "Sounds interesting enough. Anywhere cool?'

"Your first proper night out in London!" Aly cheered happily. "This is going to be great!"

Everyone suddenly felt their second wind coming, carried on by the prospect of an interesting night out—Cynthia too gathered enthusiasm as Aly conceded to going to Bubble. Even the otherwise silent Diane agreed to the plan with a drunken hiccough from where she sat swaying on her seat.

"Samuel, aren't you coming?" Cynthia purred into his ear. He tried not to wince.

"Yeah, Sammy-Bear? Aren't you coming? Pretty, pretty please?" Hannah added drily, grinning at him in wild amusement, a sole eyebrow raised distinctly for him.

Oh, what that eyebrow did to his resolve.

He downed his whisky and stood with the rest of the group. "Yeah. I'm coming."

* * *

><p>Hannah wasn't quite sure how she felt about London clubs. She hadn't much enjoyed fraternizing with that douchebag Samuel, or putting up with his rather obnoxious celebrity routine so that they could skip the line and head straight into the club. Plus, she'd had to shell out £15 for a drink ("Alice, that's like $25!"), which had barely even a full shot of vodka in it. But Aly and Alice were both so enthusiastic; plus, Alice had performed a minor miracle in convincing Lady Franny to let them go with that "dreadful prince" anywhere ("I just want you girls to know, every bad decision you make reflects directly on my reputation!").<p>

The upside was, it had been a really long time since Hannah had gone dancing. And if there was one thing Hannah loved more than everything else, it was dancing—even if it was dancing to crappy house music amongst a sea of rigid, awkward, English bodies.

But dance she did, wildly inebriated from the spliffs they'd all shared on the ride over ("Oh, no, Alice you're supposed to hold it in, not just cough it up, dear."). Even still, she could practically feel the tangible disapproval wafting from the VIP table they'd immediately procured upon arrival from whence Sam sat glaring steadily at her and that Cynthia vixen sat fuming at her utter lack of limelight.

"I'm gonna get a drink," she tried to shout over the music to her two friends, both of which were flailing around, attempting some painfully exuberant dance that seemed to be popular on this weird island.

Hannah wandered to the bar, leaving the other two on the floor to flair the night away. Maybe, with a bit of luck, neither of them would accidentally whack the other in the eye and they could all leave without any black eyes or broken bones. Hannah turned back to see Aly hopping around so violently that he practically sent Alice toppling into a group of preening young greasers.

Well, maybe not.

Hannah finally pushed her way through the crowd and landed happily at the bar where she quickly ordered her Jack and Coke and headed back to their table to catch her breath.

Unfortunately, Cynthia and her sister were rather determined to never let her regain her composure and immediately began grilling her on her family: where they lived, what they did for a living, how they could be so heartless as to send their youngest daughter all the way across the ocean, and other needlessly important details.

Hannah answered each one in turn with a mocking lilt in her voice, deciding she'd rather be amused by their idiocy than putout by it. Eventually it was settled that she had an uncle that worked in a shop ("Probably one of those horrific stalls at those plebian markets—surely he doesn't haggle, Hannah!") and in a flash, she was no longer a threat to them when it came to Sam.

And speaking of Sam: As this banter of the socially desperate took place, Hannah couldn't help but notice Sam watching her pretty closely. Maybe it was just to partake in the utter ridicule the girls seemed so set on, maybe it was that body snatchers had recently taken his entire ability to socially communicate, but Hannah couldn't help but shift uncomfortably every time she noticed his intense stare.

If only he were a normal human being, then maybe she could understand what the hell he was looking at!

Before long, Hannah's glass had grown completely dry and she was alas allowed to make her escape. "Oh would you look at that," she said, suddenly standing. "This glass seems to have a hole in it. I'll have to ask the bartender for a new one."

She pushed her way through the throng of people again, deciding to pit-stop in the bathrooms before draining her entire bank account with another weakly poured drink ("Measured shots! And you call this a developed nation, Alice!").

She exited the ladies room a few minutes later, finally having made it through the line of girls in short dresses and too-high heels and past the mass of sobbing, heartbroken girls with their friends trying desperately to calm them. She stumbled thankfully back out of the bathroom and into the dark and equally crowded hallway that led back to the main room. People seemed to be everywhere. The hall was lit only by the vibrating flashes that were sporadically cast down it from the main room's dance lights.

Hannah tripped on a girl that sat hunched against the wall, crying into her cell phone and totally unnoticed by the herds of people pushing through the narrow space. A body pushed into her, then another, and then she'd toppled into the wall, held upright only by the body that had pushed her into it.

His chest pinned her in place, her back locked against the wall. He was solid, hard as stone and radiating heat from the badly circulated stale air of the club. He settled her with his hand smoothly gripping her hip and gently holding her. She looked up into his face, finding herself swept into something completely unreal—a deep, dark universe of intensity and passion. She was gone for only a moment, but a moment so eternal that it wasn't until it was over that recognition flashed through her brain and she realized it was Sam holding her gently in place against that wall in a horrible skeezy club.

She didn't dare move.

He leaned in closer (was there a 'closer'?), his breath heavy against her ear, his lips practically grazing her earlobe. It felt as if her brain had suddenly turned to putty. "You better watch where you're going there," his voice grumbled smoothly, reverberating through her entire body. He pulled back, just far enough that she could catch a full glimpse of his darkened face, but she was wildly aware of their hips still pressing against each other's, and his hands still holding her softly, fingers resting in the grooves of her hipbones.

Maybe she was crazy, but she was almost positive you could see her heart palpitating against her rib cage.

She lifted her eyebrow at him, taking full advantage of the moment and regaining the upper hand despite her compromising position, settled between him and the wall (talk about a rock and hard place!). "And here someone had told me just this very evening that I was _so_ unremarkable, I'd assumed I could walk wherever I wanted without anyone caring in the least." She grinned her mightiest, most confident grin and slid herself along the wall until she was fully out of his grasp and he was left holding nothing but thin air.

On trembling knees she slipped through the crowd until she was entirely out of his sight.

* * *

><p><em>Whew! I think I'll just leave it there.<em>

_Until we meet again…_


	8. Clap If You Feel Constipated

An American Girl in London

Chapter 8

Clap If You Feel Constipated

Saturday morning dawned with a realization for Hannah: No matter how rich you are, you cannot buy your way out of a hangover.

She groaned and rolled over in bed, prying her obstinate eyelids into submission and flicking on her cell phone to find it just past ten in the morning. She sighed realizing she had too much to do with her day to waste it in bed with a package of biscuits ("What the fuck, Alice. American biscuits are not scones and these are goddamn graham crackers dipped in chocolate! It's like you guys invented everything wrong!"). With great momentum she swung herself out of bed and into the standing position so that she could zombie march her way into the kitchens for a life or death bottle of water.

By the time she'd transversed the opulent wasteland of La Chateau and heaved herself down the endless spiral staircase, she found herself not in the balmy sanctuary of peace and quiet her body seemed to crave, but in a madhouse of screaming toddlers, a helplessly flustered Gertie, and a whirlwind of breakfast raging through the dining room.

"Oh, Hannah, did someone run you over with a car last night?" Lady Franny asked, beginning to fret over the state of her ward.

"No. Why?" Hannah asked, rubbing her eyes and falling unceremoniously the chair that was furthest from the screaming children and their splash zone for all unwanted food items, and reached for the orange juice.

Lady Franny pinkened in polite shame. "Oh, no reason, dear."

"Because you look like death," Worthington clarified from behind his newspaper, much to his wife's displeasure.

Hannah shrugged. "Feel like it, too."

Lady Franny softened, forgetting propriety and immediately setting off in another bout of worry. "Would you like me to ask James to fix you a few drop scones?"

"I don't know what that is, but if you lace it with ibuprofen, I'll eat anything," Hannah agreed setting into a roll of bread only to find her mouth lacking enough saliva to actually chew it.

Alice then came stumbling into the dining room in a similarly hollowed manner, and settled herself quickly into a seat before she could topple to the floor. Immediately her head collapsed into her hands as her entire upper body fell gratefully onto the table.

"What did you do to her last night, Hannah?" Worthington asked, setting aside his newspaper and regarding Alice with an amused smirk, to which Hannah just grinned a reply and continued to try and chew her bread.

"Alice, dear. Elbows off the table. What if someone were to see you in this state? My reputation, Alice!" Lady Franny practically bristled, very concerned as to whether her new chef James was trustworthy with these sorts of family secret shames.

Worthington just chuckled and picked back up his London Times exactly where he'd left off. "I'd rather have her elbows on the table than her vomit on the carpet."

Hannah lifted her orange juice in the air in a mock salute. "Amen," Hannah agreed, finally having finished chewing her bread.

* * *

><p>"Samuel Ashton it's as if you're not even listening to me," Madeline Grant—damn, <em>Ashton<em>—nearly bellowed over her teacup from across the dainty table. She didn't actually bellow though, of course, because the last thing she needed was another one of The Mail's dreadful stories about her "severity of disinclination" and "the cold demeanor" that left the entire country utterly disappointed in the future king's choice of bride. But really, what did she care…

But just to be careful, she kept her wrath in her new brother-in-law to a whisper. After all, they were in public!

"What was that, Maddie?" Sam asked, finally snapping his attention back to Madeline instead of through the warped glass windows overlooking an impressive view of the Thames.

"Never mind. I rescind my comment. It's not 'as if' you're not listening to me. You are _actually_ not listening to me." She pursed her lips and settled into a proper sulk, masked behind another dainty sip of tea.

Sam frowned. "Right then. What were you saying?"

"So you admit you weren't listening?" she countered, eyebrow arched in disapproval.

"Hell Maddie, what's this really about?" Sam asked, his exasperation reaching its threshold in record timing. Man, although he loved them, he really hated women.

"Nothing." She immediately rushed to the defensive. "I just want us to exist outside of the supervision of your brother. We could be friends, you know. Proper friends."

"You woke me up at seven in the morning, knowing full well I'd have a proper hangover to tell me that you wish to be friends," Sam repeated numbly.

Madeline nodded a bit too enthusiastically. "Yes, I know we got off on the wrong foot, what with the media scandal and the botched wedding patch-up, but I really think we could be friends."

Sam watched her, his face hard and calculating, but Madeline remained resolute under his stare.

"Bullshit," Sam announced finally, after their prolonged stare-down.

Madeline pursed her lips again—this was quickly becoming her go-to look when it came to her dealings with Sam. Why must he always be so infuriating?

The stare down began anew, each party watching the other.

"What do you actually want, Maddie?"

"A brother?" Madeline replied quickly, with simple, vulnerable innocence. "The media hates me. My friends are terrified of me. And your entire family seems to just shut down in my presence. I'm really not a bad person, surely this entire nation can't hate me!"

Sam leaned across the table, recalculating this turn of events. He'd expected another lecture about not being his media scapegoat, but honesty and vulnerability hadn't been on the menu as far as he'd noticed.

"It's not you my family is shutting out, Maddie," Sam said steadily, his gaze flicking back around the café.

For a moment her face brightened.

"It's everyone," Sam continued and Madeline's face darkened again. "We're royals, Maddie. We're under constant scrutiny. There is no time for silly family affection. It's just blatant vulnerability."

Madeline seemed to slump, although she held it well with almost no discernable difference in her posture. No, it was just her entire demeanor that slumped instead. "I just want a proper family."

Sam tried to hide his scoff. "Alas you will be disappointed time and again—we may be the epitome of 'proper,' but we are not, by any means, affectionate."

"Even before you parents died?" Madeline asked, an air of depression quickly overriding their tea. Sam too felt darkness sweep through him and immediately felt his entire brain shut down.

"Listen, Maddie. This is not a fairytale. This family will never be your loving support system. Find something else to comfort you."

"So that's a no then?" she asked, her voice now more hollow than it had been at the start of their breakfast. "You don't want to be my brother."

"I am your brother," he responded. "I just don't know what that word means exactly."

* * *

><p>It had taken quite a bit of persuasion, some tears, and a rather amused interference from Worthington to convince Lady Franny to permit Hannah to take the tube up to Brompton Road to meet her uncle ("Why anyone would want to travel underground is beyond me, Hannah! I wouldn't be caught dead in those unnatural tunnels!"). Eventually, despite Lady Franny's best efforts, Hannah found herself stepping off her train at Knightsbridge and skipping happily through the bustling shopping district and into the arms of relaxed familiarity.<p>

Uncle Artie worked on the ground floor of Harrods selling Cartier like a boss. Hannah waked into the sparkling paradise with nothing but distinct discomfort for the hordes of glittering diamonds sparkling just outside her reach. Despite her week of fraternization amongst royalty, she'd never felt so out of place before in her life.

When Uncle Artie noticed his niece wandering uncomfortably through a battlefield of wedding bands, he laughed to himself before at last taking pity on the girl and making his way towards her. "Is there something I can assist you with, miss," he asked in his best, least welcoming sales assistant voice. "Wedding bands perhaps?"

Hannah bristled at the passive salesman, feeling briefly like Julia Roberts shopping on Rodeo Drive in _Pretty Woman_, before she finally recognized the voice as her uncle's. She turned around and nearly leapt into his arms in unexpected joy.

"Not here, Hannah," he whispered hushedly, trying to calm her. "Think of my reputation!"

"Oh god, you've been spending way too much fucking time with Lady Franny, Uncle Artie," Hannah laughed, rolling her eyes at his pseudo-posh accent.

"Oh shut your mouth, you crazy little wench, " he laughed in reply before holding her out at arms length. "You look fab, kiddo." Uncle Artie was a raging success story of a gay man—complete with an obnoxious Scottish terrier with a rhinestone collar. He was tall and lanky and settled with a lovely psychologist from Yorkshire. He was also still young enough, only 34 going on 26, that he and Hannah found themselves settled happily into more of a friendship than a stilted, distant family bond.

Hannah shrugged. "Apparently, royalty suits me." She grinned at him and he chucked her lovingly under the chin.

"You lucky bitch, it must be tres fab. What kind of wonderful uncle set you up with such a cushy job?" he responded with false modesty, while Hannah rolled her eyes at his pseudo-modesty. "Anyway, why don't you sneak off to the café and knick us a table and some of those gorgeous cupcakes? I'll meet you down there."

Hannah nodded happily and swept off through the throngs towards the café. She procured her cupcakes after contemplating her decision with her face pressed against the glass like a small child, and nearly fought off an old lady with her purse to get the last table. She couldn't bring herself to wait for her uncle before she set in to her cupcake with relish. It was gone by the time Uncle Artie arrived—just in time too, for she was already eyeing up his cupcake as well.

Uncle Artie merely raised an eyebrow in jest at her empty plate before he delicately unwrapped his own cupcake and moved past it. "So. Let's hear the dish. Have they chained you up in the dungeons yet? Started whipping you with chains for your impertinence?"

Hannah chuckled. "Is this my life or a soft core porno?"

"Soft core? Hardly. Did I not mention the chain whippings?"

"It's fine, really. Really fucking weird, but the Worthington's are sick, really awesome," Hannah began to fill him in in earnest.

"What about the little holler monkeys? Those demon babes must be hell on wheels."

"It's not too bad, really. They have another nanny as well. I feel like I'm there more for Alice than Kate and Louise."

"Ah, the ethereal Alice," Uncle Artie nodded along. "She's like something out of a dream, sweet girl. I can't imagine you being much of a chaperone for that little princess."

Hannah nodded along in perfect agreement. "Yeah, although if Alastair MacLeod has anything to do with it, she's going to need someone watching her back at all times. Filthy scoundrel," she grinned at her own mockery of her lovely new friend.

"Ah, yes. I've seen that ginger beast in the papers. Rather striking young Scotsman. Probably could just pick you up and toss you over his shoulder," Uncle Artie began to slip into a daydream. He took a long, savory bite of his cupcake before Hannah shook her head and he snapped out of it. "And what about you, young miss," he grinned and reached across the table to wipe a bit of frosting that had gotten on his finger on Hannah's nose. "What strapping young lad has Lady Franny deemed suitable for my lovely, little minx of a niece?"

Hannah whipped off her nose with a napkin and shot him a blank but bold stare. "Yeah. You could have warned me about that, you obnoxious jackass."

Uncle Artie just chuckled under his breath. "And deny myself such joy, I think not. So who's it going to be? A single Earl? You'd be a lovely Duchess, you know."

Hannah rolled her eyes again and slumped in her chair. "Luckily she has yet to proclaim a suitable match. All I've had is 1001 lectures about how the young prince is way off limits."

Uncle Artie frowned in thought before recognition dawned. "Not the gorgeously tragic prince? He's wonderful. But horrible. Stay away."

"Bad, bad, prince?" Hannah arched her eyebrow. "I get it. He's a total douche. You don't need to worry about it."

Uncle Artie nodded solemnly. "Good, because I know 'horribly off-limits' is exactly your type." His face broke out in a magnificent grin. "Top that off with 'tortured and misguided' and you can see why I'm surprised you haven't had your way with him already. God knows I would have!"

* * *

><p>Hannah returned from her afternoon with Uncle Artie a little bit drunk on excessive sugar intake from all the cupcakes and a few too many pints at a sleek, modern pub he favored. She stumbled on the staircase for the second time that day in an attempt to make her way to her room unnoticed.<p>

She was noticed.

"Oh, Hannah, dear. I'm so glad you're back, Lady Franny said, happening across the poor girl sprawled out on the landing after going to investigate the mysterious thumps from that wing of La Chateau. "We've just had the most absolutely delightful news."

"What's that?" Hannah tried not to slur, her head hanging upside down from a stair, having finally given up all attempts at standing, yet alone upward movement.

Lady Franny rushed up to her, and helped Hannah upright, leading her to the second landing by a vice grip on Hannah's arm. "I should have known that dreadful uncle of your would get you inebriated. He's incorrigible. I hope you told him I miss him fiercely.

Hannah nodded and took unsteady steps by herself upon reaching the top of the stairs. She still wasn't quite used to heels ("No respectable young woman can be seen outside without heels. What? Were you going to wear _flats_? Think of my reputation, Hannah!"), especially while intoxicated. Harder than driving while drunk, she calculated.

"Anyway, as I was saying—you _are_ going to remember this dear?"

Hannah nodded and let Lady Franny follow her the length of the hall back to her room. God! She wasn't that drunk, just unused to walking like a normal person.

"We got a post from none other than Cynthia Bronson while you were out!"

"Yippee?" Hannah didn't see what all the enthusiasm was about. Cynthia had presented herself to Hannah as nothing other than a vapid whore.

"Yes, dear. Apparently you two behaved most adequately last night because she has invited our Alice to Edinburgh for the week."

Hannah looked at her wearily. Cynthia hadn't seemed all that impressed by Alice last night—in fact she'd seemed royally ticked off that Alice was under the special scrutiny of her "most beloved cousin." "Cool. I'm sure Alice will have fun?"

"You're missing the point, dear! Think what this will do for my reputation! My own girls staying in the palace! Well it's not Buckingham, but Holyrood will do just as well for now…" Lady Franny continued to gush.

"Wait, Hannah's soggy brain processed Lady Franny's words with trouble. "Did you say 'girls?'"

"Lady Franny practically brushed this comment aside. "Well, of course you'll be going as well."

"Hannah arched a doubtful eyebrow. "Honestly? They invited me?"

"Well... not per se… But obviously Alice can't travel alone. You'll have to accompany her."

"Oh no!" Hannah almost began to wail. "No way. No fucking way. Don't make me go."

Lady Franny grinned and happily mistook Hannah's protests as false modesty. "Oh, stop that, dear. Honestly, you're probably the luckiest girl in the whole country!"

Maybe it was the alcohol coursing through her bloodstream, but Hannah had the sudden, overwhelming urge to cry.

* * *

><p><em>Yay! We're going to Edinburgh!<em>

_I don't really have too much to say. Sorry about the wait—I'd promise to be faster next time, but it just seems cruel to lie. Very fascinating and important (not) life I live here. Also, sorry about Sam's angsty-ness._

_Anyway. Thanks for the sick reviews. I loved them all. You guys brighten my day. Thanks!_

_Ack, I'm so excited for the Edinburgh chapter I could just die. I won't though, because then you'd never get to read them._


	9. Repunzel Repunzel Cut Off Your Damn Hair

_Thanks for the inspiration. ;)_

An American Girl in London

Chapter 9

Repunzel, Repunzel, Cut Off Your Damn Hair

It's not everyday that the sight of a decked-out private jet sitting waiting for you to board fills one with dread. But as Hannah looked up at the Bronson's family jet ("Daddy said we could borrow it for the week, wasn't that cute.") all she felt was nausea.

"It won't be that bad, Hannah," Alice reassured her, looping their arms together, seemingly for comfort, but Hannah suspected it was more to make sure she didn't take off sprinting in the opposite direction. "I promise."

"Are you scared of flying, Hannah?" Cynthia asked, her voice wilting with humor ("Paltry. Positively paltry, Alasdair. Has she never been on a plane before?" "No, Cynthia. She came over on the fucking Titanic." "How utterly paltry.").

Hannah glared at the tittering egomaniac. "No," she said with cold finality. "Just scared of the company," she added under her breath, so only a nearby Aly could hear.

"Really, Hannah. I only bite upon request," he said, snapping his jaws happily at her as they all boarded the plane and settled into their plush leather chairs.

Hannah eyed him, a bit of humor returning to the situation. "I thought they forbid you from biting after you caused that rabies epidemic."

"Rabies has been effectively eradicated in the United Kingdom," a solemn Prince Samuel said from his seat cornered against the window by Cynthia.

"Thanks for that diplomatic interlude, Princess Irrelevant." Hannah eyed him, the very effective wet blanket. Why oh why did she have to go on this trip?

The air sat still for a second, holding a deep inhalation as Sam and Hannah played an intense staring match—both calculating who was more putout by the other's presence: Was it the prince who had been effectively put on probation for the entirety of his trip, much to his chagrin and his grandmother's relief ("I swear to you, brother. Grams can't handle another paternity suit!") despite his ever-blossoming attraction to the daft American psychotic? Or was it Hannah, held hostage on this trip by her loyalty to her new family and the ever-lingering threat of poor Lady Franny's reputation ("I swear to you, Hannah, dear. My reputation can't handle that dreadful rogue. Make sure you and Alice sleep in the guest's wing." "Ah yes, dear, no canoodling with the dashing prince. I don't suppose they could lock you in a tower of some sort? Preferably one with no windows or doors." "Lord Worthington, you'll be the death of me!").

But, alas, we may never know who had more at stake for their impromptu getaway, for the tense silence was at last interrupted by the friendly air hostess handing each of them a flute of champagne and informing them in an all-too chipper voice that they would be taking off momentarily.

They all settled themselves in for the short flight, pulling out iPods and turning each of their cell phones off. Aly produced a fifty pence coin and leaned across the aisle to Hannah. "Heads or tails?"

Hannah perked up a single eyebrow and eyed him wearily. "Finally losing it, Aly? Mad Scotsman. What a cliché."

"Ha. Adorable, yae are." He grinned and tossed the coin in the air, catching it masterfully and slapping it against the back of his other hand, holding it in place, entirely covered. "Heads, I leave yae alone for the rest of the plane ride and yae fall intae a blissful sleep, tails we switch spots and I leave yae tae sit beside Diane."

Hannah frowned, her gaze flicking to her lovely, angelic seatmate, Alice, and then to Aly's seatmate, the sulking Diane already badgering the air hostess about when she could turn her cell phone back on ("It's positively barbaric! You can't expect me to live under such medieval conditions, you two-faced wench!"). "No deal, I want no part in this," she growled fluffing her pillow and settling herself into it.

"Oh, come on. Let's have a wee bit of fun, Hannah." Aly grinned and watched his best friend observing their mumbled interaction from his spot cornered by a nauseatingly chatty Cynthia Bronson ("How can she speak so much, Aly, when she hasn't a single thought in that whole brain of hers?"). "Jus' think of it this way, Hannah. Can'ae be worse than poor Sammy's situation."

Hannah scoffed, "Ah yes, the poor prince, how does he survive in such rough conditions."

Her eyes sought him out, only to be rewarded by the sight of his utter misery followed by a deepened frown from his harmless eavesdropping. She stuck out her tongue at him, for good measure, to which he withdrew and allowed his gaze to wander out of the window to observe their take off.

"Hannah!" Aly began to wail, effectively waking dear, sweet Alice who had fallen quickly into a blissful sleep from the comfort of her plush pillow. "Ye gott'ae play!"

Hannah rolled her eyes and whirled her hands in defeat. "You'll leave me alone for the rest of the plane ride?" she asked, desperate for peace and quiet so she could catch at least a quick power nap to make up for her five a.m. wake up call at the hands of a harried, overzealous and panicky Lady Franny ("You've scarcely anything proper to wear, Hannah! And nothing for dear Aly's ball! Do you think Harrods will open early for us? It's a _national emergency_!")

"Fine, I'll bite. What is it?"

Aly grinned and lifted his hand off the coin to reveal the exact opposite of relief for Hannah.

"Ah! The Queen has spoken," he grinned and kissed the coin before returning it to his pocket. "Git up."

Hannah began to sulk and reluctantly relinquish her seat to the hairy mongrel. "I'll get you next time, William Wallace."

Aly settled himself into her chair with sickening joy, fluffing his hair and grinning his lopsided, toothy grin ("I thought all those comments about British teeth were jokes, Alice…"). "I always thought I hae more of a Rob Roy look tae me. But aye well, nothine like being compared tae me nations greatest hero." He smirked and turned to his new half-awake companion to begin a whispered, sleepy conversation.

Hannah frowned and harrumphed, crossing her arms like a petulant child. "Stupid Scots," she muttered as Diane found a new outlet for her frustrations and began to berate her on her dress for the ball ("You'll be wearing Louboutin, of course? Surely that guardian of yours has at least some taste? And your dress, who will you be wearing?" "I didn't know we were allowed to wear people again. You royals really take animal cruelty to a whole new level.").

She couldn't help but notice as she settled in for the rest of the longest one-hour plane ride of her life that Samuel Ashton was suddenly watching her with look of sickening amusement.

* * *

><p>Sam hopped off the plane with relish in his step, overjoyed at the freedom of no longer cowering in a confined space beside Cynthia ("I think your grandmother handled herself just fabulously at the ribbon cutting last week, unlike those horrid cousins of yours. And her hat! She looks splendid in daffodil. She truly is a model for decorum, isn't she? My personal role model in so many aspects of my life." "Really? Grams has always said it is best to keep one's mouth shut when there is nothing of value to come out of it." "Ah! My thoughts exactly! I was just saying to Diane the other day…"). That was a whole hour of his life he'd never get back, although he had to admit he found great joy in noting that awful American in a similar predicament. He owed Aly a drink for providing him with that particular amusement. He particularly liked the very real possibility that the girl would suffocate Diane with a pillow at any moment.<p>

By the time they all boarded the town car, only Aly and Alice remained cheerful of the bunch, the rest desperately seeking a more open space for their socialization, except, of course, Cynthia, who took great advantage of her proximity to the young prince, causing him to nearly leap out of his seat and into the lap of that awful American ("I think your phone just broke my kneecap, your royal awesomeness." "Are yae sure that wae his phone, Hannah?") after a particularly boldly placed hand.

They all scrambled out of the car with great relief, even for Cynthia and the happy couple, and into the lawn of Holyrood Palace.

"Woah. Modest digs you got here, Sir Majesty," the American said, mingling her awe with her general disdain at its opulence. Sam rolled his eyes and tried not to wince at her horrid American vernacular.

"Please, at least pretend to speak like a civilized human being. Or should we hire a translator?" he aked, raising an eyebrow in challenge.

Hannah stared at him, her eyes hard and replied in the driest tone she could muster, announciating her words as if speaking to a small child. "That. Is. A. Big. House."

Sam tried simultaneously not to laugh and bristle at her derogatory tone. She was a tricky one, that odd American.

"Obviously, they only use the third floor for the family, Hannah," Alice clarified for that mystifying American.

"What do they use the rest of it for?"

Cynthia strutted past them, her nose firmly in the air. "Tours, of course."

Hannah laughed. "Of course. How could I be so silly?" she said with just enough irony to almost make Sam chuckle, before Alice hooked arms with her once again, under the pretense of leading her into the house, and they began a whispered chat that Sam couldn't quite hear, much to his frustration.

Aly wrapped one of his bear claw arms over Sam's shoulder and gripped him tight as they both watched the two girls giggle their way into the palace, Diane having long disappeared into its depths, Cynthia as well. "Glorious, is it nae?" Aly asked, his gaze wandering in a most pointed direction.

"I don't have to sleep with all the riff-raff you bring in off the street, Aly," Sam almost growled, putout for having been noticed in his admiration—although it was more a of a feeble observance, he thought. Or morbid fascination. Mild dislike shrouded in an unwelcome sexual tension?

"Really?" Aly asked sounding genuinely intrigued by this. "It never stopped yae before." He grinned and shoved his best friend out of his grasp playfully. "Heads or tails?"

Sam rolled his eyes. "I'm not playing this fucking game today."

"Really?" once again, the intrigue. "When did they catch yae and shoot a dose of responsibility right up yae bum?"

"Shut it." He tried to walk away, but thought better for it after a few paces and turned back to his best friend. "Tails," he muttered reluctantly.

Aly grinned and flipped his coin. He looked down at it, shock overcoming his entire face and Sam's heart couldn't help but stop just for an insignificant moment. Aly grinned at his face and broke into animalistic chortles of laughter. "Yae should hae seen yae face, Sammy-boy," he took the steps to his friend, who sat frozen in place, before clapping him on the shoulder once again and leading him inside. "It's nevae gonnae happen, Your Highness. Nevae gonnae sleep with yae."

* * *

><p>Hannah couldn't help but wander the halls of Holyrood like a silly tourist. She knew it sounded horribly American to say, but it was all just so… so <em>old<em>. The years of history that clouded these halls, Mary Queen of Scots' wing, the relics that lined the walls, the portraits of great men that had walked these same steps, not to mention many a great woman, she was sure of it.

It was almost overwhelming how much history could reside in one house—scratch that, _palace_.

Alice had led her to their room straight off ("What, they're so short on rooms we have to share? What kind of fucking palace is this, Alice?"), only to leave her to her own devices when that wily ginger came a-knockin' ("What kind of chaperone would I be if I left you alone in a bedroom with a handsy Scotsman?" "The kind I donnae strangle in yae sleep.").

Now she was wrapped in a web of overwhelming historical significance and, let's be honest, really fucking lost. She found herself somewhere on the second floor, to which she could only assume because she was not on the ground, and it was clearly not updated to the 21st century like the third floor they'd be crashing in for the duration of the week. But turn as many corners as she wished and walk through as many roped off historical bedrooms as there were, she still felt like a character in _Labyrinth_.

"Bit lost?"

God, why couldn't she have come to the UK and met David Bowie instead.

"Hello, Your Princeliness." She turned to face him only to find him leaning up against a doorway as if he were some sort of James Dean character with a cigarette flopping around lazily in his mouth, wearing a leather jacket with the collar popped casually. _As if you're fooling anyone_, she thought to herself. "However can I be at your service?" she asked, making no effort to hide the irony.

"Try not to touch the furniture. It's antique." Was that a smile on his lips?

"I never would have guessed." Hannah walked over to a nearby armchair and draped her arm lazily over it. His eyes widened at her gall. "What? Does the scent of peasant never wash out?" she asked, noticing his reaction.

"Ah, so you've picked up on smell too? Eventually the whole palace will reek of it."

Hannah bit her lip to hide her grin; she couldn't help but like this game. Escalating mockery was her strongest event at the Olympics of Wit. She stood a great chance of taking the gold this year. "A little Febreze will get that right out, but perhaps you don't know your way around household cleaning products? Don't worry, we can't all be perfect at everything, Princess Buttercup."

"Me? Not perfect? _Inconceivable_."

Hannah grinned. That was unexpected; she'd give him that. Try as she might, she couldn't help but be impressed—any allusions to _The_ _Princess Bride_ were way okay with her. "Whoa there, Your Honorable Monstrosity. Are you an actual human being?"

"Some might say, but then, of course, I immediately have them killed."

Hannah shrugged causally. "Fair enough, just try not to get blood on the carpet."

Sam's gut reaction was to chuckle, but it's best he was taught from a very early age to avoid such shows of affection. He turned on his heel and made a step from the room. "Next room over go through the closed door until you find a staircase. It'll lead you to the abbey."

Hannah was left alone in the garish green room to contemplate this weird turn in interaction. While his words implied he had a personality hiding somewhere beneath those layers of complete and utter douchebaggery, Hannah had yet to see a genuine emotion beyond the mild implications of amusement. God, she wondered what he'd look like if he actually smiled. Perhaps under all that disgusting stoicism he was actually handsome?

Hannah chucked to herself at such a ridiculous thought, and shouted down the hall in his wake, "Great chat as always, Samwise Gamgee," before making her way to the next room to thoroughly ignore his directions.

* * *

><p><em>Ta-da!<em>

_I did my part even amongst a sea of alternate responsibilities. Now who feels like dropping a line or two of inspiration for yours truly? _

_Much appreciated. :)_


	10. I Think I Can't, I Think I Can't

**WARNING: There is a reason this story is rated M. Skip the last section if that's want what you were secretly hoping would happen (but I think we all know it was).**

An American Girl in London

Chapter 10

I Think I Can't, I Think I Can't, I Think I Can't

The first evening in Holyrood, for Hannah, was a blur of delirious exhaustion propelled to further depths of sleep deprivation by the amount of energy it took for her to thoroughly ignore the mindless, and endless, prattle of a one Cynthia Bronson. Weirdly enough, it was only by studying the well-practiced arrangement of the facial features of a certain royal that Hannah could even manage to discover the correct balance of horror, boredom, and disinterest that Cynthia's speeches demanded. Sam's face fell into such a perfect display of complete and utter shit-misery, that Hannah couldn't help but applaud his proper upbringing.

At long last, Alice's pointed yawns released them all from their torturous affections ("And as I told Lord Kensington to make sure those hedges were—oh, Alice have I gone on a bit too long?" "Only by a mere four hours, cousin." "Shut it, Aly.") and into the warm embraces of their comfortable beds.

However, it was not nearly enough hours later, that the petit form of her roommate was bouncing eagerly on the edge of her bed, demanding in the most pleasant way that Hannah had ever witnessed, that she rise and shine.

"Aly's offered to take us on a tour of the city, Hannah. Please get up," she begged, already fully dressed in sensible boots and tights, her hair plaited into a long braid and tossed over one shoulder, wisps of blonde hair escaping as if they were made of smoke, and resting happily on the edge of Hannah's bed, grasping a warm cup of tea.

"No, Aly's offered to take _you_ on a tour of the city." Hannah rolled over and tried not to further plot the death of that evil Scotsman (Bludgeon with a bowling ball?). "I will go back to sleep."

"Please, Hannah!" Alice began to beg, placing the tea on a nearby bureau and stretching out on her stomach beside Hannah's willfully sleepy form. "I just don't quite trust myself alone with him." She poked Hannah gently on her shoulder. "It would mean a lot to me, but I suppose if you'd rather—"

Hannah sat up quickly and scowled at her friend. "I hate you for being so fucking nice."

"I'm sorry."

"I also hate that I just made you apologize for being nice."

"I'm sorry."

"Say it again, and I'll punch you." Hannah growled, reaching over Alice, who still lay there wincing and trying very hard to prevent her mouth from forming the words once again, to steal her tea. "This is not coffee," she muttered after taking a sip and tossing it unceremoniously back into its spot. "Why do we have to do this so goddamn early, anyway?"

"So we can be back in time for the match. Aly says we can't miss it, Sam has gotten us fantastic seats right on the pitch."

"Right, game, whatever," Hannah growled distractedly, crawling clumsily out of bed and wandering blearily around their room. She opened the closet door three times, blinking into its emptiness.

"Are you searching for something, Hannah?" Alice asked at last, watching her friend with he brow furrowed in puzzlement and already hugging her cup of tea again.

Hannah whirled around. "Coffee."

Alice chuckled. "Well, you're not going to find it in the wardrobe. Perhaps you should try the kitchens?"

"Right. Kitchen." Hannah turned on her heel and made a beeline for the door.

"Hannah, you're not wearing trousers!" Alice laughed as she watched her friend strut into the hall wearing only an oversized top and a pair of white socks.

"I don't even know what that means," Hannah shouted back, too determined to find coffee to bother coming back. Happily, she strutted into the kitchen (dining room? Sitting room? This was not the kind of room normal people had in their houses and therefore she wasn't sure there was a word for it except unnecessary, rich person's room? These places sure had a lot of those.) her mind too full of coffee to give much of a damn about anything else.

Upon her immediate arrival, Aly, who had previously been reading The Daily Scotsman and chatting happily with his best mate about the afternoon's match, spit his tea entirely out of his mouth. "Hannah, yae're not wearing trousers!" It wasn't but moments before the raucous laughter began on his part.

Hannah had made her way happily to the insulated pitcher, which held the godlike nectar that man now knows as coffee. She had quickly obtained a mug, and begun pouring herself a much-needed dose. "Why does everyone keep saying that?" she asked, then took her first sip and let happiness overwhelm her.

"Pants, Aly. They call them pants in America," Sam prodded drolly, observing the girl from over his London Times. He was mildly impressed, her legs toned and dark—runner's legs and his eye couldn't help but trace the line up them all the way from the hem of her top to the tops of her white socks. Not too shabby, for an American narcissist.

"What about them?" Hannah asked, casually leaning again the table and sipping her coffee.

"You seem as though you are not wearing any," Sam replied while Aly continued to sputter. He arched an eyebrow and watched her eyes flick briefly to her own legs.

"Oh, I guess I'm not." Hannah didn't see what all the fuss was about and merely shrugged. "I'm sure a barely dressed woman isn't the most shocking thing you've ever faced in the morning, but if it offend you, I'll go." She topped off her mug and turned to go just as quickly as she'd come in, just as unashamedly too.

Sam couldn't help it but follow her progress, her white cotton knickers peeking out at him from under the hem of her shirt, just begging for his attentions.

"You're staring," Aly pointed out after the girl had left the room, chuckling again. "Enjoying the view?"

"No," Sam lifting his paper again and began perusing its contents again. "But when a good looking woman crosses your path, so desperately seeking your approval, it's proper to at least spare her a glance."

"Ah," Aly nodded sagely, trying very hard not to grin. "So she's good looking now, eh?"

Cynthia swept into the room not a moment later as Aly was chortling at his best friend's discomfort, her mouth agog, her eyes concentrated in her best glare. "Why is there an obnoxious American wandering the halls in only her knickers?"

* * *

><p>The morning had gone surprisingly well for Hannah after the coffee had kicked in. Not one to be embarrassed, she had taken each of Aly's rather pointed comments about her state of undress with a casual shrug and not much else. But all and all, the three of them had had a lovely morning stroll through Edinburgh without the sickly vanity of their other companions weighing them down.<p>

The more Hannah explored of the city, the more she liked it—the castle, the extinct volcano, the countless other important landmarks ("And this is me favorite pub. And this is me favorite pub for drinking Caledonian. And this is me favorite pub for Aberlour—" "Aly, is there a single landmark on this tour that is not a pub?" "Aye… Well, this is me favorite pub for neeps and tatties… does thae count?"). It was weirdly… Disney? Yes, it was like a cracked-out Disney fairytale come to life with a dash of Harry Potter thrown in for good measure ("Alice, THIS was where she was living when she wrote the first books! Can you believe it? THIS is like the real Harry Potter World!" "Hannah, you're living in a palace for the week, but you're drooling over a cheap flat because it may or may not have belonged to JK Rowling?" "I know, Alice. It's just so… magical!"). The closes, the cashmere, the kilts, and the pipes—it was like a tourist's wet dream, and even Alice and Aly felt themselves playing along with Hannah's exuberant exploration of the small city.

When at last the bell struck noon and the three of them were forced to make their way back down The Royal Mile to the palace that lay waiting for them at the bottom of the hill, it was with sad looks like petulant children sent back to school, and excited plans for further explorations to happen the next day—just as soon as Alice could fulfill Lady Franny's greatest desires and find Hannah a presentable dress for the MacLeod Ball.

Alas they met up the world's most surly prince of all time at his palace and his trusty slut ("Cynthia, you don't even like rugby, why do you want to come?" "I resent that, Sammy. It's a majestic sport!" "It's men beating each other up over a ball, how is that majestic?" "Yae're an ignorant American, Hannah."). Diane, most unfortunately, decided to hang back and watch the "The Only Way Is Essex."

Upon arriving at Murrayfield Stadium, Hannah found herself eating her own words. This was not football without the pads; this was The Fratellis, and old men with their faces painted, and overzealous nationalism, and sexy men in tiny shorts tackling each other. This was heaven. Yes, she liked this very much indeed and was not very cowardly about voicing such opinions.

By the time the game was over (Scotland having lost—not being the best of the teams, although no one seemed to have told their fans this) they were all pumped up and excited, even Sam had let emotions other than blatant boredom flash across his stoic face. Hannah was still jumping around singing "Loch Lomond" ("God, thy name is Runrig!") at the top of her lungs, her sudden conversion to the new sport having been complete and overwhelming.

"Just yae wait tae Six Nations, Hannah. Aye'll take yae to every game," Aly growled, drunk on excitement and Tennent's Lager.

"Whatever for?" Sam asked, eyeing his unruly friend in his natural, overzealously Scottish habitat. "So she can watch Scotland lose every match?"

"This'll be our yea', Sammy-lad."

Sam scoffed. "Your year to lose to England, yet again."

"I just don't get it," Hannah stage whispered. "It's the same fucking country, but they don't seem to get that."

Cynthia was leaning up against a fence, her arms crossed over her chest, still a bit surly about the amount of time Sam had spent leaning into Hannah's ear, supposedly under the pretense of teaching that American the rules, although he'd never paid half as much attention to Cynthia's own rugby education. "Never relate a Scotsman to an Englishman," she instructed Hannah petulantly as the town car pulled up.

Hannah shrugged, taking the nugget of wisdom despite its source. "I'll keep that in mind," she said, trying to climb into the driver's side of the car. "Shotgun!"

"Wrong side, Hannah," Alice instructed her gently after she'd nearly jumped right into the driver's lap, while their rest of their merry crew laughed raucously.

It wasn't much later that they were dropped off in New Town at the head of Rose Street and Aly was leading them all happily from pub to pub, determined they complete the near impossible feat known as the Rose Street Pub Crawl. By the sixth bar, they—and the rest of the city—were all properly hammered.

The pub-crawl was abandoned, and they all stumbled a block over to George Street to let off some steam at one of the more upscale clubs.

As was becoming their general routine at these sorts of places, Sam settled himself happily at a suddenly open table with his name on it, Cynthia joined him in order to properly fawn all over him, Aly and Alice set off to rub awkwardly against each other on the pretense of dancing, and Hannah settled herself happily in their proximity with the major goal of dancing—although if Aly kept throwing elbows like that, she wasn't sure she'd get to do anything but block her face from his fatal attacks.

As Hannah danced (or rather, hopped constantly out of reach of her horribly uncoordinated British friends), she couldn't help but notice Sam the Magnificent watching her constantly from the corner of his eye. It's not as though she was paying particular attention to him, but she could feel that strange intensity radiating off him like minor electric shocks to her hoo-ha. She'd felt it that morning as he'd traced her legs with his eyes over his paper (yes, of course she'd noticed!), as he'd leaned into her during the game whispering the rules in her ear just a bit more gently than was strictly necessary, as they'd sat wedged in those pubs, their bodies rubbing accidentally against each other as they shuffled back and forth from the bar.

Yes, she felt it. Begrudgingly, but not altogether unwelcome. It'd been a long time since her senses had been so overwhelmed by a guy—no, not a guy. A prince. God, why couldn't she do anything normal?

She felt that zing run up her spine again as she dodged a badly placed elbow thrown by Alice after an attempt at Aly dipping her, and spun around to see Sam sitting now utterly alone (had he at last shaken Cynthia like a bad case of syphilis?) at his table staring directly at—even she couldn't deny it—her. God, she hated him, she knew she hated him. He was an arrogant jerk that clearly found himself above everyone and—to top that off—had gone out of his way to insult her and make her feel as out of place as possible in this entire fucked up universe he ran.

She knew all this, but, holy fuck, the way he was looking at her (smoldering? Or was that too cheap?) made all thoughts that involved clothing slip quickly out of her mind.

And she was just drunk enough to think that would suffice.

But just as quickly as it came, it went—as his attention was overwhelmed by a petite blonde with a heart-shaped face and a low-cut top that slunk up to his table and draped herself over his arm. Well, she certainly wasn't the only woman in the room now, was she?

Distracted by, once again, the overwhelming rejection at the hand of an egotistical "I-swear-he-isn't-even-very-cute-in-real-life" prince, Hannah let herself sulk for an entire moment—or at least she would have, had she not been too distracted by her own self-pity to notice Aly's elbow, at long last, making direct contact with her temporal lobe.

_That's it_, she thought to herself as she lay sprawled out drunkenly on the dance floor, sticky from spilled Gin and Tonics and god knows what else, _I am officially pathetic_.

* * *

><p>Sam was intoxicated. He didn't know if it was by one too many Taliskers or the scent of the woman on top of him, back in her oversized top (was that Homer Simpson on it? Never in his life had Sam found Homer Simpson to be so sexy) and those silly white ankle socks. The knickers, unlike that morning, had long been stripped off by their drunken, desperate fumblings.<p>

God, he'd wanted her. All night he'd watched her, all through the game. For some reason, as ridiculous as she'd looked, he'd had the image of those white, cotton panties flashing out beneath her top (was it really Homer Simpson? That just seemed too odd…) stuck in his head all day. God knows why. He'd definitely seen sexier things in his life—or even the past week. He'd also seen more obvious, more desperate displays of attention, but this one struck him hard and he couldn't help but let his mouth caress her ear just barely while speaking with her at the game, couldn't help but position himself so she would be forced to press her body against his (even if she was wearing a rather thick jumper) as she went towards the bar for another round, he couldn't help but watch her move on the dance floor—like no one in the whole fucking world was watching her but him.

When their eyes had connected, as she noticed his attentions and bit her bottom lip, her eyes beckoning to him as she coyly looked up, then down, then back at him. Right at him.

Yeah, it was on with the weird American, he decided as some moronic blonde named Lauren (like he cared?) began to fawn all over him and he tried to shake her.

It wasn't much later they were tumbling back through the palace to his chambers, her lips ravaging his. She was modestly undressed by the time they had even made it back to his room. He yanked her hair suddenly, but gently, forcing her onto his bed before collapsing there beside her after setting the rest of his whisky bottle—where had that come from?—on a nearby armoire and yanking his shirt off.

She did the rest for him. Within seconds she was straddling him, her hands deftly tearing at his belt and the zipper of his trousers, reaching in to pull out his heavy erection and beginning to stroke it expertly. "Do you have a rubber?" she asked, holding his entire penis in a firm, but gentle fist across his entire length.

"Nope," he replied quite seriously, his eyes rolling back into his head in complete and utter joy.

"Fuck it," she muttered, lifting herself onto him, still holding his cock in place so she could guide him inside of her. She gasped as he filled her and he tried very hard to limit his expressions of sentiment to naught but a groan as she tightened around him and began to ride him.

Up and down, she slid over him, her firm thighs encasing his groin, as she swirled her hips, lifting and sliding and thrusting. Just as he was hitting his edge, he flipped into motion, and easily pinned her to the bed, his entire body now on top of her—in a position of power. To take her however he so wished.

He thrusted hard and fast, but still smooth, filling her to her limit before slipping almost all the way back out. She squirmed under him, her full breasts spread out before him to lick or suck or bite however he so felt. He took his time with her, lasting as long as he could (all day, he'd waited, what was a bit longer?) before at last with a groan he let himself release and she whimpered her open approval.

He rolled off her happily and onto his plush pillows, grinning at his own accomplishment and fell asleep with only one thought rolling through his head: _I am king_.

When he came to, she was back on him again, straddling him but slowly sliding her body down. He felt himself being taken into her mouth and gently swirled by her tongue and lips. "Ah, god, Hannah. That's a way to be woken up," he growled, his eyes closed in joy, a smirk spreading across his lips as she continued her work.

Just as quickly, she stopped. "Hannah? My name's Lauren."

Oh. Fuck.

The smirk quickly disappeared and his eyes snapped open hurriedly. "Right, Lauren. That's what I said?"

She eyed him suspiciously for a moment before she flicked her gaze around his room, taking in his entire net worth in a single glance before she bent her head again and continued her ministrations.

He found himself tumbling back towards the precipice again, as she continued to work her way over his erection, and happily let himself be led there.

Ah, well. Wrong accent, but she'd do, too.

* * *

><p><em>Hehehehe. That was mean of me, wasn't it? Trust me, whenif they have sex, it's going to phenomenal!_

_Anyway, I got some sick feedback about reviews. And I think you're right, S.C. Mema, this is not a great site for feedback and I should maybe explore other opportunities, but alas I've been writing here for over 10 years and I have a lot of shit to do, so I will probably not be exploring other places anytime soon._

_But I do have a proposition for you guys. So I'm leaving town on a trip very soon and will be gone for at least a month which means I don't really know when I'll be able to write my next chapter. That being said (and I know it's shitty to do this to ya'll), if I could get to 55 reviews, I will promise you guys another chapter on…. MONDAY! That's THIS MONDAY!_

_Did that sweeten the pot a little? So 14 measly reviews. Think you got it in you?_

_Until we meet again, my good friends._


	11. When I See An Elephant Fall

_Well, that was a lot of reviews, CMonline (how did you know that that was exactly how I had planned to start this exact chapter!) and everyone else. Here is your reward! I hope you enjoy it half as much as I enjoy reading your responses._

An American Girl In London

Chapter 11

When I See An Elephant Fall

Sam kissed the clingy blond yet again, still subtly trying to hint that she should just shut up and leave already. He'd gotten her as far as the entrance foyer to the living quarters, but alas had not fully escaped her clutches.

"Will you really call me, your highness?" she asked as their lips parted, staring up at him out of doleful, desperate eyes.

He looked at the space directly over her head and tried not to concentrate on the churning in his stomach and the lightning bolts through his brain. He knew what he should do in this situation: lie, tell her she's beautiful, and that he would "eagerly be waiting for their next meeting." Instead he rolled his eyes and held her away from him at arm's length.

"Listen, Rebecca—"

"Lauren," she corrected quickly.

He rolled his eyes again. "Right, Lauren. Last night was lovely, as you well know."

She grinned, smirking at her evening's accomplishment. "I enjoyed myself as well."

"Right, yes." He let himself be momentarily sucked back in to the hazy memories from the night before, and the slightly less hazy ones from the morning. God, what had he done? "But. It was a one-off. I think we both know that."

Her grin faltered. "But—"

"Julia—"

"Lauren."

"Right," he tried not to growl in frustration. "I'm a fucking prince. What did you really expect to come of this?"

She shrugged, ghostly pale and lost in the shock of such… honesty? Yes, honesty was the word Sam chose to go with.

"Exactly, Katie." He grinned happily and let go of his grasp on her arms, patting her sadly on the head. "Now, go on, one of the servants will see you out. Go tell your friends you shagged Samuel Ashton, marry a nice Scottish clansman of some sort and use this memory to keep you through the endless years of your inevitably unhappy marriage."

"Oh," was all she could say as she was numbly whisked down the stairs by the sudden appearance of a handy servant. "So you won't be calling me, then?" she shouted back up the stairs, still processing his entire speech.

Sam growled in frustration, yanking a hand through his hair and turning on his heel to make his way back down the hall towards the kitchens. Alas, once again, he was not getting out of this predicament as easily as he'd hoped as he was stopped by the presence of Hannah Argos standing before him laughing into her coffee.

"Very interesting technique, Sir Salute-Your-Shorts," she said drolly, leaning against a nearby doorjamb, hugging a mug of coffee and clearly entertained by the entire scene he'd played out before her. "The honesty approach? Very clever. I particularly enjoyed the part where you couldn't remember her name. Good touch there, Your Royal Douchebag."

Sam couldn't help but glare, unhappy to have his privacy so blatantly infringed upon. "Ah, Hannah. I see you managed to find yourself a pair of pants this morning."

She grinned and looked down at he well-fitting jeans (thank you, Lady Franny's reputation). "British or American pants? Because there's really no way to see if I'm wearing the British kind or not."

Sam rubbed his aching head at the image, still suffering from his horrible choices from the night before. "What are you even doing up this early, Hannah?" he asked rubbing his temples and trying to decide the best way past her and back to his chambers.

Hannah eyed him with suspicious amusement. "It's 11:00." She snorted in laughter at his blatant look of pain, clearly disheveled and hungover, his usually messy hair having been knotted into a tangle of dark curls by his evening activities, his sweatpants hanging low on his hips—so low that she could be quite sure that _he_ sure as hell wasn't wearing any pants of the British variety, but could make out the indentation of muscle that ran down his bare chest, cutting a strong line to his groin. Hannah couldn't help but laugh—not at his groin, that wasn't funny at all (at least not to her knowledge). "Don't look so miserable, Sir Slutface. You at least got laid last night, whereas all I got was a minor concussion and carried home by an inebriated Scotsman—and not in a good way."

She tried not to blush under the circumstances which she'd received said concussion. If her delirious, drunken memories served her correctly—which they commonly didn't—her and the young prince had shared a weirdly sexually charged moment the night before. Although, after witnessing his bang and bail technique, she considered her concussion to be the better ending to that dreadful story.

Sam yanked a hand through his disastrous hair once again. "Really, Hannah, I just don't quite have the energy for your hilarious quips this morning. Why don't you go share them with someone who gives a fuck?"

Hannah chuckled to herself and tried not to appear as miffed as she felt. "Oh, of course. How rude of me to interrupt your own self-inflicted misery. I'll let you get back to it," she said clearly in a still wildly amused tone before turning and making her way briskly down the hall and back towards her own room.

Sam groaned to himself, yanked his hair (at this rate he'd be as bald as his brother) and wallowed his way right back to bed to sleep off a lifetime's worth of bad decisions.

* * *

><p>"It's official. I hate him," Hannah shouted through the curtain. Her, Alice and a begrudging Aly had been at it all afternoon, searching desperately for a dress for Hannah to wear to Aly's ball ("It's nae me bloody, ball. It's me family's ball. If it were, though, we'd hae bought the firs' bloody dress at the firs' bloody shop!" "I'm with Aly on this one, Alice." "Shut it, both of you, or next time I'll invite Cynthia along as well."). Now they found themselves at the end of Princes Street, Aly staring sorely out the window at the clear view up Calton Hill to where the National Monument sat beckoning to all of them to continue their explorations of the city, and possibly break into one of the walled gardens on the hill's far side.<p>

"You can't hate him, Hannah. It's not proper," Alice said sweetly, albeit forcefully buttoning the long train of silk buttons with a bit more frustration than was strictly necessary. "He's our possible monarch—god forbid."

"God forbid he is given actual power or that every other potential ruler before him kicks the bucket?"

"Yea she bloo'aye we'ey cae hay'e 'im," Aly growled from the couch, ignoring Hannah's comment and downing the champagne the shop assistants had been doling out all afternoon leaving him quite intoxicated on top of frustrated ("Cae we just pick a dress? Look, this one haes a skirt. Very lovely." "You great wildebeest of a man, I am not letting Hannah go anywhere in… _tulle_!" "Duh, Aly. What kind of monster are you?"). "He's me bes' maye a'ne 'aye hay'e him mast ot te time." Things were getting out of hand, and to top it off no one could decipher Aly's drunken, Scottish accent any longer. They let him lay on the couch, babbling to himself.

"I just don't understand who gave him the right to walk around like he owns the whole fucking country," Hannah continued to whine, still putout by her morning 's run-in with Sam and his public wankery ("Well, if it's not a word, Alice, it should be!"). "You should have seen that poor girl being shoved out of the door this morning. No one deserves that kind of punishment, even if they are dumb enough to actually _want_ to touch His Royal Jackass's penis."

"That's called birthright, Hannah. He may not own the country, but he does potentially rule it." Alice laughed briefly and dragged Hannah out of the dressing room once again to observe the latest dress she'd manhandled a most reluctant Hannah into. "And as for the penis touching, she is definitely not the first girl and she definitely won't be the last. He has a reputation, as you must know by now."

"For being a slut?" Hannah asked bluntly while Alice circled her like a shark.

Alice looked up quickly and grinned. "Well, not just that…"

"Gross." Hannah tried to wipe the thought of Samuel Ashton's sexual prowess from her mind. It wasn't that easy. Why had Aly drunk all the champagne?

Alice practically growled in frustration after regarding Hannah in the mirror for a brief moment. "For someone so pretty, you sure look peculiar in these bloody dresses."

"Rude." Hannah pouted in front of the three-way mirror.

"I didn't say bad. I said 'peculiar,'" Alice defended herself, practically pushing Hannah back into the fitting room and almost tearing the dress off her.

"Really, Alice. I think Aly is right. We've been at this for hours and I want to go outside and play with the other kids!" Hannah mock-whined as Alice set off back through the curtain to wrangle up another herd of dresses.

"No. What does that hairy mongrel know of dresses? I think we just need to change tactics." She stopped perusing the racks and went back to where Hannah was standing in the dress salon in a white silk robe, scarcely tied around her waist and allowing a long slice of thigh to flash through the slit in the robe and a large portion of bra to hang casually out of the front. Her eyes briefly flicked to where Aly was now snoring on the salon couch, worried at what he might see of her indecent friend.

Alice's eyes suddenly lit up. "I think we've been going about this all wrong."

"Exactly." Hannah took a deep breath, tired of being poked and prodded in Alice's desperate search for perfection—couldn't she just settle for average like Hannah always had and let Hannah and Aly head off to the pub? "So let's just go with the green one we saw like two hours ago and call it a day."

"God, no," Alice gasped, slightly horrified, twirling off into the masses of already rejected dresses. She came back quickly, garment bag in hand, and a wild, mischievous grin across her face. "All this time, Hannah, I've been trying to find you a dress that would make you fit in. But you don't fit in, Hannah, and that's exactly what we need to work with."

She unzipped the garment bag and held the dress before her like the holy grail of dresses.

Hannah's eyes grew wide as she took in the contraption before her (Somewhere in the country, lady Franny's reputation had just died a very slow and painful death). "I can't wear that, Alice."

"You're brash, and you're bold, and you're sexy. Hannah, you _can _wear this."

Hannah blew a large puff of air out of her mouth, effectively blowing her hair out her face in complete and utter defeat. "Well, at least when I get fired from my job as an au pair I'll already have a solid back-up plan and the uniform of a call-girl."

Alice grinned. "Yes, but a _high-end_ call-girl." She squealed happily, recognizing her friend's capitulation and leading her back into the fitting room to create her masterpiece.

"At least there's good money in that," Hannah groaned as she succumbed to her fate.

* * *

><p>By half-past five the three of them had settled happily in the back of a non-descript pub somewhere in Old Town. A few quick text messages from Aly and a half hour later, they were joined by the miserable presence of Sam and his ignorant band of followers, ("You can't call them that to their faces, Hannah!") i.e. Cynthia and Diane.<p>

The three new arrivals settled begrudgingly into the array of various, mismatched chairs they had gathered around their set. Cynthia immediately set out to make the place a bit more bearable by wiping it down thoroughly with a bag of travel anti-bacteria wipes ("Oh, so that's the brand of idiot that buys those stupid things.").

"Is that strictly necessary?" Hannah asked, watching the girl scrub a bit of well-placed grime off the table. "It's a pub. It's supposed to be dirty, adds to the charm."

Cynthia continued with her work, undeterred by Hannah's derisive tone. "E. Coli is a very real threat in a place like this."

"Apparently, so is snobbery—"

"Leave 'er tae it, Hannah," Aly, intercede before the two could break out in ardent bickering, his mind having cleared a bit after a sobering round of Stewart's Ale to clear the champagne from poisoning his head. "I's pro'lly thae firs' thing shae's cleaned in her entire life."

"You're a belligerent wanker." Cynthia prickled and stuffed the rest of her wipes back into her purse.

"Nae," Aly chuckled. "I'm jus' Scottish."

Hannah held up a single finger and intoned in her best official announcer's voice, "And another point for overzealous nationalism."

Sam couldn't help but snort a shot of smug laughter on behalf of his friend, to which Hannah shot him a pointed glare. "What? I'm allowed to be amused by racial stereotypes," he replied defensively, holding up his hands and shrinking away from her slightly.

"That's not very… 'proper.'" Hannah attempted her highbrow accent yet again. It hadn't gotten any better.

"Which is exactly why he does it," Cynthia bit without thinking, then stopped and looked around as if surprised she'd actually said it aloud.

Hannah's face broke into a wild grin. "Touché, Cynthia. Mind if I shake your hand for that one?" Hannah asked, reaching across the table, willing to form a temporary truce in the name of royal affronts.

Cynthia however, nearly toppled out of her lounger trying to escape physical contact with that tainted American, to which Hannah and Aly guffawed—Sam would have as well, were he not silenced with a glare from Cynthia.

Sensing that things were turning against him, Sam hopped off his bar stool. "Anything from the bar?"

Aly, Hannah and Alice all peered happily into their still-full pints and shrugged him off. "Dry martini," Cynthia requested, to which almost all other occupants of the table rolled their eyes, except Diane who requested one as well before thinking better of it and declaring, "Actually, better just acquire a bottle of gin. Extra dry, please."

Needless to say, the night went off from there. It wasn't even nine in the evening before they were all stumbling back along Holyrood Park towards the palace while Alice led them in a few choice selections by the musical god, Robbie Williams, at the top of their lungs.

All thoughts of heading back towards the clubs had long since been abandoned after a few groans and some awkward questions concerning the exact means to which Cynthia had made it home after Sam had disappeared the previous evening while she'd been in the loo. Instead it was someone's very bright idea (Aly's) to kip off to the Tesco for a case of Stella and climb the crags for sunset.

And so it was that six drunken morons found themselves panting their way up a very steep hill ("In what fucking universe is this a hill, Aly?" "Scotland.") to sit drunkenly at the open face of a very windy cliff.

"God, it's beautiful," Hannah said, watching as the neon pink sun slunk down behind them causing the city to glow solemnly, the castle sitting proudly in the distance like a beacon of some lost world. If a dragon had flown by at that precise moment, she wouldn't have been even slightly surprised. She maybe would have shit herself, but she wouldn't have been surprised.

"Somedae," Aly slurred, wrapping his arm over Sam's shoulder and pointing out at the horizon seriously. "Everything thae the light touches will be yours."

"What are you on about?" Sam asked, confused and turning to face his best mate to assess just how utterly mad he had gone, to which Aly just replied by drawing a cross on Sam's forehead and whispering "Simba," with quiet seriousness.

Hannah picked a spot right on the edge and plopped down, letting her legs swing about carelessly off the edge of the cliff, whirling them about maniacally and pointing out landmarks she could recognize from her tours of the city. The rest of the group settled in a line beside her, some more recklessly than others, but all surprisingly close to the edge, unafraid of the jagged rocks beneath them.

"So who wants to climb Arthur's Seat with me?" Hannah asked the group at large as the sun finally sunk below the horizon and they were enveloped in a heavy darkness.

"Nae in this dark," Aly growled, dangling his beer over the edge and staring down at the darkness. "I's rocky, Hannah."

"Plus, we're drunk, Hannah," Alice pointed out. "We'll go tomorrow."

"It's not much higher than we are now."

"It's steeper. And rockier."

"Where's your sense of adventure, guys?"

"It got drunk with the rest of me," Alice giggled.

"How about this, Hannah," Sam said slowly, tracing the outline of her profile against the silhouette of the city lights with his eyes, "even if you climb it now, it'd be futile. You won't be able to see anything once you get to the top."

Hannah rolled her eyes, a gesture he could still make out as the lights flashed across her soft blue eyes (were they blue? He hadn't noticed that before). "Pussy."

Sam scoffed. "I'll climb the damn thing. I'll even do it in the dark. But I'm not doing it while I'm so bloody pissed I can't see straight."

"Fine," Hannah conceded. "Sober up and put on your climbing shoes. We'll do it before dawn."

"Hannah, really?" Alice asked, yawning and her head falling lazily onto Aly's shoulder as she watched the stars come out to play for the evening, getting lost in the scene and losing her grip on the world around her.

"Yes," Hannah said with determination, perhaps channeling other emotions somewhat haphazardly into the challenge. "And I'll bet you anything, Your Royal Gremlin, that I can even beat you to the top."

"Overly-competitive Americans," Cynthia stage-whispered to Diane and the two of them cackled.

Sam ignored them, caught in the trance of the light hitting across her face in streaks of bare flesh and disappointed memories of the night before. "Anything?" he asked coyly, clearly quite a few things were on his mind.

Hannah nodded once—confidently, solemnly. "Anything," she confirmed without a trace of doubt.

The held each other's eyes—or at least what they could see in the night's lights—staring hard and deep into the other. Zing—and that weirdly pleasant sensation had returned to Hannah's lady castle. The moment stretched on until there was a shift beside them that broke their creepy little spell, a crash on the rocks below them, and a cry of anguish.

"What just happened?" Hannah asked into the darkness only to hear Aly sobbing in reply. "Aly?" she repeated, suddenly very nervous.

At long last, Aly finally pulled himself together long enough to reply. "I jus' dropped me beer."

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Sam almost growled as everyone released a collective breath they'd all unknowingly been holding.

"No," Aly sniffled. "Ane it wa'e full, too!"

* * *

><p><em>Good god, did you really think I'd write one of them off a cliff? This is not that kind of story, just so you know. I'm aiming for minimal angst but maximum sexual tension. Have a little faith, people.<em>

_I also just want to clarify about the crags, they're not like dangerously high. I mean yes, it's a cliff for all intents and purposes, and it would seriously hurt and/or kill you if you fell, but it's not something people fall off every day. Every tourist and their great-grandmother has walked up it (and been insanely winded at the top), so our merry band of pranksters sitting at the top and dangling their legs about isn't really insane. It's actually pretty commonplace. Yes, even while drunk (Plus, even if it were a bit dangerous, do they really seem like the kind of folks that shy away from reckless actions?). Climbing Arthur's seat (which if you don't know about, you should research because it has an amazing history… or at least think back to the beginning of _One Day_ in which Emma and Dex climb the same "hill"—they call it a hill, actually it's an extinct volcano) is also a pretty common, albeit grueling quest (this time leave grams at home) so it'll be fun to watch Hannah and Sam racing up it very soon. _

_So we have two more chapters in Edinburgh—one of which being Aly's ball (the other of which being one of my favorites if I can pull it off correctly) and then that's the end of… about the first quarter of the story (I'd equate it to the Netherfield Ball in my timeline). I'd like to get those two chapters out by the end of the month and before I take my hiatus and go traveling (back to my beloved Edinburgh—can't you just tell how much I love it?—for a bit, a bit of London and a few other stops). I'm not begging for reviews and I won't set limits again, but I do want you all to know that last chapter's reviews (all chapter's reviews, in fact) really do help a lot in finding the time to write this baby. Plus, it just feels damn good._

_This was a very long Author's note._


	12. Jack and Jill Raced Up A Hill

_Surprise! A new Chapter! Enjoy it, you wonderful people, you._

An American Girl In London

Chapter 12

Jack and Jill Raced Up A Hill

"Brownie, Princess, Dearest Cupcake."

Before Sam could register what was happening, before it entirely calculated that there was an obnoxious American sitting perched on the side of his bed, poking him repeatedly in the nose, and whispering ironic nothings in his ear, he was already leaping out of his own skin and into a more defensive position, his mouth shouting out "Fuck me!" all on its own accord.

To this Hannah Argos raised one, solitary, powerful eyebrow and watched her most favoritest prince cowering beneath his covers. "I'd rather not," she replied drily. She tilted her head silently to the side and regarded his position, nearly in the fetal position, duvet pulled all the way up under his chin. "Really. That's your most defensive stance?"

Sam dropped his sheets and allowed himself to relax, not that the sight of Hannah on/near/or around his bed was of any great comfort to him. "What are you doing in my room?" he eyed her wearily and suspiciously. "Finally capitulating to your desires?"

Hannah pursed her lips and considered hiding her snort of laughter. "I'll capitulate to throwing you off a mountain after I beat your ass up it."

Sam sighed and rolled his eyes, his still slightly soggy brain placing the exact reason for her presence in his room (well, not exact, he could think of a few better ones) before the sun had even made its first appearance.

"Rise and shine, it's butt-kicking time," Hannah sang happily.

Sam groaned and rubbed his hands through his hair (this girl would have him bald by the end of the week). "You're not still on about that are you?"

Hannah nodded eagerly. "I take my wagers very seriously, and as I recall correctly we wagered…" Hannah grinned wickedly and sighed dramatically, "_anything_."

Sam let himself be led off to a mystical universe that so far had only existed in his dreams. "You know, if you want to shag, we're already in my bed." He smirked and lounged back amongst his multitude of pillows. "Let's skip this silly competition so I can go back to sleep and let you have your way with me."

"In that order even? Lucky me!" Hannah acted with mock-enthusiasm. She rolled her eyes. "Thrilling alternative, Princess Samuel," she intoned drolly, "but has it crossed your puny brain that a three second tumble between the sheets with yours truly isn't exactly high on my list of priorities? Now, get your lazy ass up and race me to the top of the damn hill."

"Ah, you wound," he replied equally drolly, making to get out of bed before hesitating.

"What's your problem now, captain cretin?" Hannah asked, her exasperation evident.

Sam smirked and tilted his head to the side. "Let's just say there isn't much separating your from a full view of the family jewels."

"Gross," Hannah grumbled, hopping quickly off his bed and making her way towards the exit. "It's not like I'm twelve."

Sam grinned at her exit. "You can see me naked if you win. I don't give away prizes for free."

"Really? That's not what the rest of the country seems to think," Hannah shot back, still making her retreat as he crawled out of bed and into a pair of shorts with a grin.

* * *

><p>It was a grueling battle up the 822 feet to the top of Arthur's Seat. Both parties had underestimated the other and the race had remained tied—neither of which particularly accustomed to hill running—for most of the journey until Sam made a bold misstep that cost him the race as his foot caught on a loose rock about thirty feet from the summit. He panted his way up after that, already recognizing his defeat, but still determined to at least see the thing through to the finish.<p>

Hannah was standing at the pole marking the peak, her hands atop her head, her chest heaving, panting with the effort of her hurried climb, sweat causing her running clothes to cling to the scarce bit of flesh they still covered. Her sports bra was clearly visible under her tank, her jog-shorts were rolled up to reveal the same muscled thighs he'd only observed previously over breakfast—throw into the mix her flushed from effort cheeks and the pink fluorescents of the sunrise bouncing off her tanned expanses of skin and it really wasn't so shocking that Sam had to steady himself on a nearby boulder as he came over the crest and caught a full view of her.

Although, even he had to admit, he'd seen more beautiful women less dressed than that. It was probably just a lack of oxygen and the altitude making it very difficult for him to think properly.

Hannah let her arms fall back to her side as he came up beside her, letting her breathing smooth itself out and ignoring the twist in her gut. "Good race. I must admit I underestimated you."

"You won on a technicality," Sam panted, his breath not returning to him quite as easily as Hannah's seemed to be. "I slipped."

Hannah struck out her bottom lip and pretended to pout. "Aw. Sore loser?"

Sam shot her a dirty look over his shoulder from where he was hunched over trying to regain himself. Eventually he collapsed into a seated position and let his head fall between his knees to prevent further wooziness.

Hannah sat down happily beside him, trying not to wince at the tortures of her gut-cramps. She wrapped her arms around her knees, letting her body fall into a natural, comfortable position as she watched the sun slowly creep up on them, lighting the entirety of the city right before their eyes. "Beautiful," she whispered as she watched the castle walls in the distance dance in the glow of the morning.

Sam looked up quickly as he caught the word, still panting slightly, catching sight of her eyes sparkling that transparent blue he'd caught a brief glimpse of the evening before. "You have very blue eyes," he said suddenly, not quite sure who had possessed his body and made those awful words come out.

"Um. Thanks," she replied, her cheeks tinting pink and her attention snapping back to him, their gazes connecting in another one of those brief zings of intensity that unsettled her stomach to no end.

Sam dipped his head again, unable to handle the mutual scrutiny. "It must just be the light. Normally I don't even notice them."

Hannah took a deep, calming breath. "You're very good with compliments," she intoned, the irony back in her voice, nice moment so clearly over.

He shrugged. "Oh, you know what I meant."

She didn't, but she rolled her eyes and let it drop—willing to just watch the sun rise in silence as he studied the rocks beneath his legs with intense scrutiny.

She studied the city that lay sprawled out beneath her, the tiny houses, the tiny people waking up to start their days, get breakfast—she wondered briefly if they could detour and get a chocolate croissant on their way back to the palace.

"Do you know why they call it Arthur's seat?" Sam asked, quietly and amicably, watching the horizon now just as intently as he'd watched the rocks earlier.

She shook her head momentarily before it registered he wasn't paying her much attention. "No."

Sam shrugged and looked back down. "It's a reference to King Arthur. According to Welsh legend he was literally a giant. This was his throne where he could sit and look over his kingdom."

Hannah blinked at him—his factual, serious tone somewhat baffling to her. "So Arthur was Welsh?"

Sam shrugged. "This was before the Anglo-Saxons came around—Whales was a series of kingdoms across most of Britain—except the Picts in the Scottish Highlands and a few other tribal areas, Cornwall and such. Arthur united all those Welsh tribes. Merlin was probably his bard… that or a nutter that lived naked in the woods 500 years previously. No one's quite sure."

Hannah chuckled—one man's wizard is another man's naked madman in the woods.

"As for Guinevere—she was probably just made up over time, to be honest."

"Pfft," Hannah snorted. "That's romantic." She looked at him thoughtfully. "Why do you know all this?"

Sam shrugged. "It's not crazy to know about one of your island's first great rulers," he locked his eyes onto hers seriously.

"No, not crazy. Still weird, though." She shook her head slowly, just listening to his breaths beat a steady pattern. She couldn't quite grasp it: myths, legends, history. Whatever it was, what did he look so fucking sad about? Somehow she felt a weird weight between the two of them, like it would be inappropriate to make fun of him or mock him for the sudden indecipherable significance he was placing on an ambiguous legend. She felt weirdly uncomfortable with his unhappiness, like he was trying to unload something on her that she neither understood nor wanted. For the first time it hit her in utter seriousness that Sam wasn't just any other dude of privilege… and exactly what that meant. "Although, if there's some sort of underlying significance to whatever you're going on about, I just don't seem to get it."

His eyes flashed briefly—aw, poor little tortured prince.

"What's that?" she asked, suddenly no longer able to handle their heavy silence and pointing over his shoulder to a far-off ruin in the opposite direction of Arthur's Seat than the palace.

Sam looked hastily over his shoulder. He squinted into the distance trying to make-out just exactly she was gesturing to. "What?"

"The ruins over there." She whirled her hand ambiguously in a general direction.

"Oh," Sam stopped squinting, still not quite recognizing what she was pointing so vaguely at, but assuming nonetheless. "It's probably Craigmillar. It's an old ruined castle—estate—thing."

Oh," Hannah tilted her head. "Can we go see it?" she asked, hopping to her feet and dusting herself off.

"What? Really?"

Hannah nodded eagerly. "I'll race you back down."

"No way," Sam held out his hands in surrender. "You're mad."

"Come on." She arched that eyebrow—that dangerous, damn eyebrow. "Double or nothing?"

* * *

><p>Sam didn't know if it was exhaustion that slowed him down or merely the preferable view of his competitor that coming in last afforded him, but he didn't put much effort into racing Hannah back down the hill. She was a baffling mystery to him, so unaccustomed to everything in his life that 90 percent of the time he was almost positive they were speaking entirely different languages (not to mention the horrible way she said the words "basil" and "tomato"). She was horrible, rude, insufferable, obnoxious, and boisterous—everything his family, his country, his duty hated.<p>

He wanted her quite badly.

When they got to the edge of Holyrood, she at last slowed down and waited for him to catch up. "Which way is it?" she asked, frowning at his complete and utter lack of effort to keep up with her.

He just shrugged in reply. "I've never been there."

She rolled her eyes, her exasperation with him growing by the second. "Well, then I guess we'll just have to wander around until we find it." She grabbed him by the forearm and began to lead him off in the general direction she'd gestured to on the hill. Through parking lots, and rows of nondescript developments they wandered, her dragging him along as he tried to focus all of his brain on moving his feet rather than the feel of her hand on his sweaty forearm (since when had sweaty forearms been appealing to anyone?—even if they were royal forearms). At long last, they found themselves at the edge of the grounds after the help of a random passerby with a Yorkie that had observed her look of wide-eyed awe and his harried bewilderment and taken them as nothing other than a passing couple of tourists. The American accent was probably what threw them off, but in Hannah's presence he was nothing more than an average 24-year-old male.

It was most unsettling.

By the time they reached the front gate, a nice woman with a small gardening spade stopped them and told them it'd be five pounds entry. Hannah looked back at him, to which he'd just shrugged, money having been the last thing on his mind when Hannah had woken him up so unceremoniously that morning.

"You're a whole new brand of useless." She rolled her eyes and pulled off one of her trainers reaching into its sweaty contents and retrieving a damp tenner. "Sorry," she apologized as the woman eyed the bill with well-meaning repulsion, before shrugging merrily and permitting their entrance, returning to her gardening and leaving them to explore the almost entirely isolated ruins all by their lonesome.

Hannah wandered the grounds like a lost explorer, overjoyed to be so free in her observations (no velvet ropes or guards keeping you herded to a small portion of each room here). She climbed the bare stone walls, rounded staircases with curiosity, and threw open heavy wooden doors without thinking. She climbed the trees that stood within the estate's walls, their heavy branches weeping towards the floor, years of history weighing them down. She even ducked into the giant stone fireplaces, looking up into the small slice of sky she could see at the chimney's very top. "You really should see this, Sammy Bear," she said in awe after scaling a small portion of wall to sit happily in what would have been a second story cupboard, if the second story still had a floor.

It was a bit like hanging out with a precocious child. "No, thank you," he replied from his position still secure on the floor.

"What? Does this place give you the creeps?"

He looked up at her, sitting on the edge of nothing, her legs swinging about wildly again. "Why would it give me… 'the creeps?'"

Hannah shrugged. "Because the sun now sets on the British Empire?" She hopped down in one quick movement, not even a breath of hesitation and landed squarely on her feet.

"Is this some sort of symbolic lecture on American dominance?" Sam eyed her wearily. "I've never known the sun to not set on the British Empire. Not in my lifetime."

Hannah shook her head and curled her lips. "Too many negatives." She looked around her, at the crumbling half-walls, but still able to see exactly how the entire building had fit together—where each floor had stood and what each room's purpose was. "Just trying to figure out what the hell you were talking about up on that hill." She tucked herself into a small section of stone window, curling up in a ball as if she were sitting comfortably in the world's most regal window box.

Sam frowned. "I hadn't been talking about anything on that hill." He slowly made his way over to her and sat down at the edge of the same window, their backs resting briefly against each other's before they both tensed and he scooted a bit further away.

"Well then, are you ever actually talking about anything?" she asked, flicking her eyes over her shoulder so she could watch him.

He too focused his attentions on her, the majority of her ponytail having fallen out from their morning exercise, her skin still clearly sticky from dried sweat and radiating warmth he could still feel even though they were no longer touching. "Not particularly."

She wanted him too, he just knew it. Right then and there, her weird blue eyes watching him closely over her own shoulder, biting her bottom lip, her hair already tousled and messy. He leaned in slowly, for once allowing himself to savor a moment before he plunged headfirst in and found himself lost in it. This would be fun—wrong, impossible, and stupid—but fun nonetheless.

Just when he could feel her breath on his lips, just when he was so close to finally claiming what he so thoroughly wanted, she jerked away, her gaze falling to a distant point. She bit her bottom lip again briefly. "I don't really want to play this game," she muttered, jumping to her feet and striding away from him, through an ominous hole in the wall that led to what used to be the cellar.

He frowned, pouting into the empty, crumbling room like a boy being denied a new toy. "I thought you liked games."

* * *

><p>Unable to handle their silence (any silence, really, Hannah was almost allergic to silence), Hannah spent the majority of their walk back through the park to the palace prying Sam with questions about himself that he predominantly answered in the most monosyllabic and ambiguous way. It was very frustrating for her. <em>He<em> was very frustrating for her.

Sometimes they got along pretty well. She had to admit she liked their sexually charged banter—it amused her—but getting anything personal out of him was a bit like extracting teeth… and hurt like it too.

"So Aly's, like, your… bodyguard?"

He shrugged. "Of sorts. He's supposed to keep me out of trouble."

"He's also your best friend?" she asked, eyeing him curiously, but still desperately trying to avoid the two of them slipping back into one of their heady, overly significant silences.

"He's a good mate, yes. " Sam willfully looked at anything, everything, they passed but her, still silently licking his wounds from the foreign sting of rejection (and was that the second time she'd done that now, too?). "Hence, why there is still so much trouble to be had."

"But you don't like Alice much, do you?" Hannah asked.

His gaze flicked briefly to her before he thought better of it. How had she picked up on that? "She'd not my cup of tea, no." For an ignorant American, she sure asked some loaded questions.

Hannah snorted. "Does your whole family speak in euphemisms?"

"We're politicians… of sorts."

Hannah rolled her eyes—he wasn't ready to start _that_ debate with her. "What about your parents? They must love watching you wander the country whoring it up."

Sam stopped briefly in his tracks. Once again, he couldn't help but let his gaze sink in to her. She'd noticed he'd stopped walking and turned back to see what had caused the problem. "Rude question?" She asked frowning at the particularly hallowed look on his otherwise expressionless face.

He hesitated a moment longer. She could sense his reluctance; his mental calculations on what would be the best way to respond.

"I find directness to be the least complicated form of expression," she pointed out helpfully as he continued to make his mental calculations. "So. Just… say it—"

"They're dead."

"Oh." She winced. God she knew that. Everyone and their mother knew that—even in her weird, convoluted childhood she'd remembered that being a pretty big deal. "I'm sor—"

"Do you want to go back through the tunnel or go around?" he asked quickly, regaining his step and practically charging past her.

She followed after, letting the silence finally rule over them as they both walked briskly back towards the palace, trying to escape the other and the horrible feelings they'd dredged up within each other. When they arrived back at the palace (their pace having picked up considerably) it was almost tea time and they found themselves separating happily to their own rooms to brood alone on their own thoughts.

Hannah took a long, steamy shower—taking her time, turning things over in her mind. She didn't regret walking away from him when he'd tried to kiss her. It had been a game and, as playful as she was, there were certain things that just weren't worth the gamble. She couldn't help but feel awful about bringing up his parents, the gentle throb of regret and guilt causing her to lose herself in thoughts of Sam—of their misguided communications, those unnecessarily heated glances, and the empty shell of despair that had flashed across his face when she'd brought the entire thing up. That momentary vulnerability, that crack in his mask of indifference, was an image that would haunt her for the rest of forever.

Maybe there was more to Samuel Ashton than haughty narcissism and a trained façade of indifference?

She readied herself for dinner ("No more grungy pubs. We're going to The Wycherley tonight. What's the point of having something beautiful if you can't show it off?" "Well, Cynthia, aye didnae know yae were so proud of me thae yae want to show me off." "You're a ginger shame upon the family."), picking out a nice sequined cocktail dress her and Alice had bought in the vintage section of Top Shop that cut at a short, blunt angle to show off her long, lean legs that still ached from her morning's race with the haughty prince.

She grinned wickedly to herself—how could she almost forget? She had a prize to cash in.

* * *

><p>"Right now."<p>

"Now?" Sam frowned into the darkness of the night, the rest of his crowd of "friends" standing behind Hannah as she grinned wickedly in the moonlight.

They had only recently left dinner at some fancy joint on the High Street and now stood at the entrance to Edinburgh Castle in their dinner-wear ready to torture the living daylights out of him.

"Aly, mate. You can't let her do this to me," he pleaded, looking to his best friend for a pardon. Aly only heckled him further in response.

"I won fair and square, Sammy-boy," Hannah pointed out. "And we bet _anything_." She winked at him. "So you're doing it."

"No. I'm not."

Hannah pouted amusedly, stepping so close to him that their bodies were nearly touching, her breath on his cheek. He wanted so badly to sweep his hand under the short hem of that recklessly eye-catching dress and discover all the mysteries that lay beneath it. He'd wanted that all throughout dinner, and she knew it, didn't she? She was just toying with him, that heartless wench. "Why so shy all of a sudden? Weren't you just saying this very morning how very badly you wanted me to get you naked," she whispered with a grin before stepping away and announcing, "Now, drop your pants!" to which the rest of the girls and a very entertained Aly all joined in on and began chanting. "American _and_ British, there please."

Sam quickly, albeit begrudgingly, stripped off his dinner jacket and oxford shirt. He kicked off his fancy leather shoes. He shot Hannah one last particularly vindictive glare before taking a deep breath and pulling off both his trousers and his boxers in one full swoop, leaving him standing at the top of the royal mile in nothing but his birthday suit and a pair of socks.

Hannah looked down, studiously observing a previously rather reputable aspect of his anatomy, a grin tucked happily on her pursed lips. "Hmm. I'd have thought the royal family jewels would have been worth a bit more than _that_."

The rest of the group—even Cynthia who was drunk enough on martinis to find this entire thing wildly amusing—chuckled at that and Sam quickly clutched his hand over his privates.

"It's chilly," he grumbled, his cheeks flaming pink.

Hannah let her grin split across her face. "Oh, I'm sure," she giggled before gathering up all his clothes and pointing down the Royal Mile, gesturing to the distance where it ran directly to the doorsteps of the palace. "Now, better get running, Sammy."

With one final glare, and to great applause from his most beloved cretins, he took off running and they all watched his pale bottom glowing in the darkness and sprinting off into the night.

* * *

><p><em>There is a lot of naked Sam in this chapter. You may thank me accordingly.<em>

_God, isn't Hannah just the fucking best? Evil little minx. Poor Sam._


	13. Who Is The Dumbest One Of All

**Warning: Adult Content.**

An American Girl In London

Chapter 13

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall; Who Is The Dumbest One Of All

Friday morning dawned in a frenzy ("Oh, Alice, how nice of you to join me back in _our room_ which you clearly _did not_ sleep in last night." "Drink your coffee, Hannah. Maybe it will make you a nicer person."). Their time of relative calm and abject debauchery in Edinburgh had come to a close, superseded by the overwhelming need to beautify, primp, and dose one's self with large portions of paracetemol in order to make the constant fretting of a harried, travel weary Lady Franny ("An hour and ten minute flight—the things I have to do to cross into this dreary wilderness! Just think of my reputation—or, worse, my hair!") seem more bearable.

Hannah and Alice were whisked out of the palace in the still of the morning and off to the plush interior of The Scotsman Hotel to join Gertie and prepare themselves entirely to Lady Franny's pleasing. Even Cynthia was somewhat sad to see the two girls go, their frivolous time in the city clearly coming to an end, but she bore the loss well and set off to strangle her hairstylist into submission ("I said a chignon, not a French twist! What kind of horrid brand of moron are you!").

When all was said and done, Lady Franny quite thoroughly approved of her girls—or at least her adopted ones, Kate and Louise having been left at home under the guardianship of their poor father ("How about you let your old Dad teach you a trick or two, girls? Now, this one's called Seven Card Stud and here's how it works—Now, Louise stop screaming and let daddy teach you some _useful_ life skills.")—even Hannah in her bold, red silk dress ("I won't have much trouble finding you a husband after this, Hannah, now will I?" "Ah, let us all rejoice in my future marital bliss.").

But Hannah eventually made it through the trying process of getting ready, every part of her body ringing horribly with discomfort as Lady Franny shuffled them all into a modest limousine and off towards their destination. After a rides worth of lectures from Lady Franny ("Now Hannah dear, I have finally settled on a suitable match for you. Sir Daniel Mayer. He's Her Majesty's top footman!" "Yippee."), Hannah gratefully escaped into the party, dumping her shawl unceremoniously upon the coat check and set out determinedly to get herself liquored up.

"Hannah, you can't escape yet!" Lady Franny snatched her up when she was just feet away from a flute of glorious champagne. "You haven't met Daniel!"

Hannah almost whimpered as the waiter swept out of her grasp holding that glorious booze. Sweet Jesus—her feet ached already from her damned shoes, her hair was a heavy knot of overly primped curls, her eyes were heavy with natural makeup ("You know what would be more natural? No makeup." "Hannah, that's just preposterous!"), and her dress clung so needily to her flesh that she could feel it creeping happily up her bum as she uncomfortably shifted around trying to get used to the weird sensation of wearing absolutely no underwear in public ("Just make sure and keep your legs crossed at all times, Hannah, and you'll be just fine." "Here lies Lady Franny's reputation. May we all now rest in peace.")

Honestly, the last thing she wanted to do was pretend to get cuddly with some chump Lady Franny had managed to wrangle up. But she was already being dragged about, stumbling around in her torturous heels, in the direction of one of the world's most twitchy, pervy little men.

"Ah, lovely, lovely. She'll make a most suitable wife." Sir Daniel Mayer raked his eyes over the bare flesh of Hannah's back and what was visible of her thigh through the high slit in her dress. Never had Hannah felt so exposed and uncomfortable about it than she did under the scrutiny of the portly "gentleman" before her. He looked to be in his mid thirties, his hair already sprouting grays and his nose, sadly, already sprouting hairs. As if his gaze weren't unsettling enough, it wasn't but a few more moments of Hannah uncomfortably shifting around in her painful shoes while Lady Franny listed all of her most attractive attributes as if selling her off at an auctions, before Sir Daniel couldn't help but touch—his hand reaching out to trace the line of her arm from her shoulder to her elbow.

As soon as his clammy fingers made contact with her skin, Hannah was slapping his hand away and glaring at him miserably. He jumped away from her, so shocked at her abrasive attention, his hand stinging from where she'd slapped him. She rolled her eyes at Lady Franny, who stood with her mouth agape, just as shocked as Sir Daniel.

"Seriously?" Hannah almost growled, humor still etched in her voice ("Surely, she was kidding!") as she glared at Lady Franny. "That's the best you got?" She raised her eyebrows at the weasely little man before shaking her head sadly at Lady Franny and teetering off in her heels.

Sir Daniel and Lady Franny stared at her retreating form, watching her almost entirely bare back slip into the throng of guests. Sir Daniel's face broke out in a happy grin the moment his eyes lost her in the crowd. "She's feisty," he declared, licking his lips hungrily. "I think she'll do wonderfully."

Lady Franny clenched her teeth somewhere between a smile and a grimace. Maybe this wasn't such a great match after all…

* * *

><p>Oh. Sweet. Jesus.<p>

Samuel Ashton didn't quite know what to think when he noticed that insane American entering the ballroom. Her red silk dress cut a dangerous angle over her chest, wrapped tightly across her breasts then cut over her shoulders in just a thin strap, leaving her entire back bare from the tips of her wavy, dark hair to the dip at her lower waist. And when she moved the long slip at the front of her gown opened happily to reveal those beautiful thighs he'd followed so blindly all of the day before, and the muscles across her tanned back flexed in enchanting rhythms. Yes, Samuel Ashton didn't know what to think because, the moment he saw her, his entire brain shut down and he was enveloped in a happy, steady buzzing noise that consumed all control over his body.

Luckily, before he could notice Sam's stare and lecture him further on the pitfalls of being the nations greatest prat ("I woul' worrae about where yae were yesterae but aye knae she didn'ae do anything stupid with yae because yae still look so bloody miserable!"), Aly was drawn off towards his darling Alice (reason number 2,344 why Aly couldn't marry Alice Kent: Who would be his wingman after that?) like a moth to a flame. This left Sam alone in his trance to stare happily at the vast expanses of exposed flesh on a one Hannah Argos.

It was weirdly as if the rest of the room slipped away. At all times he found his eyes being drawn right back towards her—slapping off some handsy knight, laughing easily with her plain looking friend, being spun around gaily with a very lucky Aly, downing a flute of champagne, her cheeks flushing redder all the while.

It didn't take long for him to finally snap. Good god, he had to have her. Just once, if even for a moment, he had to touch every single part of her.

Overcome with desire, he stalked quickly through the crowd of people. Cynthia stopped him once, batting her eyes and simpering, but he was on a mission and nothing would stand in his way. He found her at a bar, sipping something pink and laughing with that plain-faced friend of hers again. Just as he was about to step up to her, to make his move, it hit him that this was not something he did on a daily basis and he didn't quite… know what to say to her. His normal conquests didn't require much in the form of seduction—in fact, now that he thought about it, it was normally them that came up to him, not the other way around.

"Are you auditioning for the role of Royal Statue impersonator, or are you allowed to speak?" Hannah asked, that goddamn eyebrow peaked at him, as he realized he'd been standing there for quite some time without actually saying anything.

He tried to grin—it came out as a grimace. He tried to speak—his tongue felt heavy and he ended up almost gagging on it. The buzz in his head was now out of control—he could hardly think, hear or speak. Good god, what the hell was wrong with him?

Hannah was frowning at him, seeming very confused, her long curls pulled over one shoulder as she eyed him through her dark pupils. "You look like you're going to puke," she pointed out because he did. And he felt a bit like it too—his neck flushing a deep red, his collar suddenly seeming too tight—he was just too close to her now, her sweet perfume was choking him and the sight of her bare skin causing his head to spin.

"Here, drink this," the friend said hastily, also eyeing him with a great deal of confusion as she handed him her drink which he downed immediately, choking on its contents before he slammed it down and began to loosen his collar.

As soon as he released the top button on his shirt, he took three large gulps of air before turning to Hannah and forcing himself to speak. "Would you dance with me?"

Hannah eyed him wearily for a long, tense minute. They held another one of their silent showdowns before she felt that telltale zing of desire shoot through her. "Are you going to have another panic attack?" she asked drily, finally capitulating and slipping off her bar stool.

Sam shook his head hastily and tried not to grin or say anything stupid as he noticed her physical signs of assent (fucking hell, she wasn't wearing a bra was she?). He slipped easily through the crowd towards the floor to claim them a good spot for the next traditional Scottish dance.

Hannah looked back at Gertie, both girls' faces etched with amused shock. "What did you do to the prince, Hannah?" Gertie asked, trying not to giggle.

Hannah shrugged. "I have no fucking idea," she muttered, pushing her hair back off her shoulders and following Sam into the crowd.

* * *

><p>As soon as she stepped on to the floor, Hannah had to take off her shoes. She couldn't handle another round of happy spinning on deadly heels—especially now that she was dancing with Sam and not Aly, making it far less acceptable to allow herself to be practically carried throughout the dance. He eyed her strangely, as if removing her shoes to dance was a very strange thing to do. She supposed it was, but necessity called for it.<p>

Sam seemed nervous and weird. Weirder than normal even. She couldn't quite feel entirely comfortable around him; his eyes were darker than usual, deeper, and clearly pointed in her general direction. It was simultaneously unsettling and exhilarating. She didn't particularly like his attentions, it made her skin crawl—no, not crawl. Unlike Sir Daniel she didn't want to slap his hand instinctively away. He made her prickle, made every sensation coursing through her body heat up into overtime, made her groin clench, her stomach twist, her knees somewhat weak.

As the song began he laid his hand gently on the bare skin of her lower back and she felt her entire body immediately heat. His finger silently traced the seam of where her dress met her lower back as they waited for the dance to begin. Her eyes flicked up to his face, catching his darkened eyes looking down at her, close with intensity. Her breath caught, just for a moment before the music began and he set off in leading her in the steps.

Hannah forced herself to concentrate on the steps (left, right, spin, step out, spin in, again), but she kept finding herself fumbling in the simplest bodily commands. Maybe it was the way his breath kept brushing over her shoulder, or his eyes would rake up her body, but Samuel Ashton had her thoroughly unsettled.

"We could speak, you know? Make polite conversations?" she suggested hopefully as she came spinning back in to his grasp, knocking clumsily against his chest.

"Since when have you and I ever been polite?" he replied, trying to track the steps in his head, but instead watching the flush creep across her chest.

Hannah rolled her eyes. "I'm not saying we have to chatsies or anything, but we could at least speak to pass the time."

"Time is passing quite quickly for me actually." A grin snuck into the corners of his lips and she couldn't help but watch him closely.

"Time may be passing normally for you, but this is insanely awkward for me, so why don't you give a dog a bone," she suggested.

He looked down at her, another staring match before he quickly spun her into the next move. "What would you like to talk about?"

Hannah shrugged hopelessly. Really, they had nothing in common, nothing to talk about, but she couldn't help but want to clear her head from whatever fog was taking over her body and causing it to sit prickling at the edge of desire. "Nothing," she suggested lamely. "Forget it."

Sam bent close to her ear, stilling their movements. "Would you like to talk about how beautiful you look tonight?"

Hannah rolled her eyes and stepped away as the dance called for it. "Don't bullshit me," she muttered as she spun back to him.

"I wasn't bullshitting you. I was paying you a compliment," he pointed out, an edge slipping in to his voice as she reacted so coldly to him.

"Well, I don't want it. I'm not one of your bimbos."

He practically stopped dancing. "You're sure dressed for the part, though."

If there had been any semblance of dancing between them, Hannah stopped it immediately, her eyes flicking down, briefly self-conscious about her dress. "I didn't want this either," she almost growled, her eyes alighting with a vengeance.

"Well, then what do you want, Hannah Argos?" he asked bitterly, wound up from her constant disapproval of his every move and complete inability to receive him with anything other than hostility.

She stepped away. "Certainly not this," she looked around at the other couples trying desperately to dance around the pair of them bickering in the middle of the floor, "and definitely not you."

She turned on her bare heel, and made her way quickly across the floor.

* * *

><p>The buzzing took over Sam's body as he followed her off the dance floor. She slipped quickly through the crowds, no longer burdened by her shoes, and he followed hastily despite the constant threat of people trying to stop him with their fucking polite inquiries. He practically shoved them all away, his mind in a rage.<p>

He saw her duck quickly into an alcove, tucked behind a tartan drape so as to mildly conceal its presence from the rest of the guests. He practically tore through the damn thing, stumbling onto the other side of the nook and falling into her.

She was effectively pinned against the wall. He could feel every square inch of her pressed up against him. Without thinking, without breathing, or even moving, he let his lips find hers, pressing into her needily and prying his way in to her mouth. She responded immediately, her tongue wrapping around his, kissing him back thoroughly, deeply, hungrily.

His hands then began their exploration starting with her back, gently caressing his way across her long expanse of skin, clutching her tightly against his body. One of his hands departed her back as he felt her leg gently wrapping around his waist. He parted the slit in her dress and allowed his hand to run up the smooth muscles of her thigh, pulling her leg further around his waist until their pelvises were grinding firmly against each other's. His hand inched higher up her thigh until it reached her blissfully bare bottom (good god, she really wasn't wearing any underwear!) which he cupped happily in his palm.

Her own hands had set to their roving as well, having already yanked his shirt from where in was tucked into his pants; she was working her way down his abdomen to the waist of his pants. Heady with passion, she let her hand feel his erection through the material of his pants (not quite so little as it was the evening before!), listened to him groan against her mouth and she felt the outline of his hardened penis. She too gasped as his hand circled her thigh and his fingers found her deepest sensations.

"You want me," he growled with desire, his mouth yanked away from hers and finding her ear with his lips as his fingers parted their way inside of her.

"No, I don't," she whispered against his skin, pulling just enough away that his hand slipped from beneath her dress.

"Yes, you do." He pressed her back against the wall again, his lips finding her own swollen pair. "I can prove it."

She grinned and slipped her hand back out of his pants quickly, to which he protested heavily—he'd been so close! She raked a hand through her hair, settling the bits he mussed up in his attentions to her curls as he settled his lips to work on her neck.

"I'd like to see you try." She shoved him off her quickly, straightened her dress, and stepped out from their little hiding spot, leaving him only with a wicked grin and a throbbing between his legs that would be hard to solve alone.

* * *

><p>The next morning Sam came into consciousness with a groan and a thump. His head was in agony, having taken it upon himself to drink the party clean out of alcohol after his evening had taken a turn for the worse—his minx in red having disappeared entirely after their intimate encounter. Now his entire body was racked with a hangover, not to mention still sore from unfulfilled desires.<p>

"You should probably wake up now, baby brother."

Oh god, things just couldn't get any worse could they? He held his hand over his head and tried to think about something other than puking up his guts or punching his one and only brother in the face—both of which seemed like viable possibilities, but alas the puke came first.

As soon as he'd finished retching into the bin, George handed him a hanky, patted him twice on the back, dropped a newspaper into his lap and uttered the worst sentence known to any royal prince, "Grams would like to see you."

Sam looked through his bleary, stinging eyes at the headline that lay before him: _Royal Prince Runs Naked Through Town_.

Shit. Sam vomited again.

Once he was finished he looked up at his brother hoping for something resembling compassion, only to be met with stark pity tinged with the sadness one normally reserves for terminally ill animals.

"That bad?" Sam asked, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

George frowned pityingly. "She flew all the way here from Paris when she got wind of it." He scrambled off the bed and tossed Sam some clothing for the day. "She especially liked the bit about the blonde you brought home from the club," he added as Sam slowly clambered into his clothing, his stomach in knots whenever his thoughts turned to his irate grandmother.

He looked up at his brother pleadingly as George began to lead him out of his chambers and towards his grandmother's inevitable fury. "How bad exactly? The gallows or the tower?"

George frowned, stopping at the door to their grandmother's private offices. "Worse. The guillotine," he muttered before flinging open the door and leading Sam to his untimely death.

Sam fell miserably into one of the chairs, staring into the stoic face of the country's greatest lady. She let her eyes flick easily over his miserable appearance, taking in his corrosive state of dread and haggardness with her piercing, emotionless gray eyes.

"Hello Samuel."

"Hello Grandmother," he muttered, misery so clearly written across his face.

"I suppose you've seen today's papers?" she asked, looking down at the headlines before her.

Sam winced. "Briefly."

She looked back up at him, staring coldly into his very soul. Sam had for the briefest moment, the complete and utter understanding of what it would be like to have your face eaten by a hoard of angry dementors—actually, dementors had nothing on his grandmother, as Sam's entire soul slipped into a realm of overwhelming despair. She didn't need to say it: that he'd fucked up, that he'd disgraced them all—even his dead parents—that he was a shame to them all. He felt it, he felt it deep down inside him all from her cold, demanding eyes.

"You will be sent back to London," she said, her voice cold as she looked back down at the papers before her, already halfway moved on to more pressing matters—like the state of her country.

"Yes, grandmother," he muttered obediently.

"You are not to go anywhere or do anything without the express permission of your brother or a bodyguard."

"Yes, grandmother."

"As for your guard, you'll be reassigned. I'm sending Alasdair to South Africa to start a global hunger campaign."

"But—"

Her voice was finally raised, just an octave as she interrupted him, fully conveying to him just how angry she was. "You are not to speak, eat or breathe without your family's permission, Samuel. And you will continue to do such until you can fully grasp the burden we all share together and learn to carry your share. Do understand me, Samuel?"

Yes, he understood. Understood completely that his life as he knew it was effectively and entirely over.

"Yes, grandmother. I understand."

_**End Part One**_

* * *

><p><em>Sorry this took so long to get posted. As you can see I had a lot that I needed to happen. I'm not even sure this is where I wanted it, but I wanted to post something before I left town so you'll just have to make do, it seems. We met my Collins, and my Lady Catherine here briefly (more to come… plus my Wickham!) though, so not all bad! <em>

_Now, as I mentioned I'll be out of town for the remainder of July so I probably won't be posting anything until August. But by then I'll also be starting a new job and all sorts of fun things, so… well, I'll post as soon as I can! Sorry, I have nothing else to offer you._

_The way I see this story in the long term is two more parts, one more bit, and an epilogue. The next part will probably pick up about a month down the road. I'm going to skim over some bits because I do still have a lot that I want to do with this story. I also received a complaint about the strong language (or rather how much of it there is), but I've written it that way on purpose. I want this to be an anti-fairytale. That's why I have an anti-hero, and anti-heroine (although, I still like them both), sexual encounters, and strong language. Not your thing? Stop reading, it's only going to get worse (although if you're still with me at this point, then I think you should stick around because there is still a lot of fun to be had!). I also don't want to follow P&P too close because we all know how that story goes—something new is fun too, right?_

_Anyway, wish me luck in my travels and know that I'm not abandoning you guys—you mean too much to me for me to do that! Until we meet again..._


	14. Love at First Eavesdropping

An American Girl in London

Chapter 14

Love at First Eavesdropping

**Part II**

_One Month Later_

"Why the fuck won't he leave me alone?"

Hannah's favorite uncle tried his best not to laugh hysterically—_tried_ being the operative word, for he failed miserably, peeling over in a fit of raucous laughter in the middle of the trendy, modern pub where the pair of them were sharing a nice lunch.

"Shut it, Uncle Artie. It's not funny!" Hannah pleaded, frowning at her uncle's amusement and pouting momentarily.

Uncle Artie took this time to recompose himself, reeling in his laughter and trying to look at his niece with a straight face. Once he'd finally regained his composure, he took a deep breath and considered Hannah's predicament. "Come on, Hannah, it can't be all bad. I mean, he is a squirrely excuse of a man, and it was a rather unfortunate decision on his part to get all his hair transplanted from his head to his chest, but surely you can outwit him?"

Hannah took a long sip of her pint and tried not to choke on it. "Outwit him? The man wouldn't know wit if it came at him with a razor blade. I've tried everything except hiring a jet to write it in the sky. Speaking of which, he hired a jet to write my name in the sky."

"Really?" Uncle Artie began to giggle.

"No! What—are you retarded?" Hannah scoffed her disbelief. "Why must you take so much joy in my misery?"

Uncle Artie shrugged, "I don't know," he replied shoving a chip into his mouth with most un-gentlemanly gusto. "Because we're family? Or perhaps it's just blatantly amusing that you're being forced into an arranged marriage with the guy who wipes the Queen's arse?"

Hannah grinned. "Fair enough for him, though really. Since he's quite convinced rainbows and sunshine shoot out of it."

Uncle Artie returned her grin as a third voice joined in their shared chuckles. Hannah and Artie immediately shot their attention to the unwanted guest in their conversation.

"I'm sorry, does my misery amuse you as well?" Hannah asked archly, one eyebrow high on her brow, frowning at the young bartender who lounged casually against the beer cooler, dark fringe dropped deep across his forehead, grinning wickedly at Hannah and Uncle Artie's conversation—dimples deeply set in his chiseled cheeks.

"To a certain extent, yes," the bartender replied casually, unflinching under Hannah's narrowed stare.

Hannah frowned good-naturedly ("Of course it was good-natured, Hannah-dear. Look at his eyes! How could anyone be cross at those diamonds! Worthington once gave me a set of earrings—thousands of quid, you can be sure—and they only glittered half as much!"). "Do you make a habit of invading the privacy of your patrons?"

The bartender remained nonplussed, merely grinning back at her stares. "Only the ones that passably amuse me. Your treatment of the grand lady really does her justice."

"Not much of a royal nationalist?" Uncle Artie asked twiddling his thumbs and frowning at the young man who continued his heated staring match with his niece without much notice of his presence.

"Not much, no."

Hannah's face began to soften a bit more at his continued observations of her person mingled with her growing fascination with his opinions. "For political reasons?" She gasped in mildly mocked intrigue. "Are you an anarchist?"

He scoffed as he casually took an order from a passing customer, prying off the cap of the requested beverage and sliding it across the bar with an unmistakable air of cool. He did all of this without removing his attentions entirely from Hannah as he responded, "Personal reasons actually. The royal family and I have never had many views in common, but no I'm not an anarchist."

"No fun." Hannah mock pouted.

The bartender rolled his eyes and let a grin slide happily across his features. "Trust me. The real story is much more intriguing. It's a dramatic, sordid tale of bribery, scandal, violence and murder. Shakespeare himself couldn't have fabricated my history of royal woes. Much more interesting than being an anarchist."

Hannah eyed him wearily and suspiciously. "I'd like to hear more, please," she replied, holding back her eagerness and feigning mild disinterest.

The bartender snorted at her routine. "Let me buy you a drink sometime, and I'll tell you all about it."

Hannah let her eyes slide up and down his figure (or at least what she could see from her side of the bar), once again feigning disinterest despite the fact that she very much liked the look of what she saw ("Good god, Hannah! You could wash Kate and Louise's laundry on those abdominals, I'm sure." "Yes, m'dear. He is what these kids like to call 'fit.'" "Oh, Worthington, don't vex me!" "If I stopped, dear, I would possibly cease to exist."). "Or you could just tell me now."

"Oh for god's sake, Hannah, let the boy buy you a drink!" Uncle Artie exclaimed in exasperation, trying very hard not to gawk at the young man so clearly interested in his niece (why, if he were ten years younger and ten pounds skinnier!).

Hannah gave him a look that clearly declared her frustration with her uncle. "What? I'm not going out with a perfect stranger!"

The bartender extended his hand across the bar. "James Croft," he declared. "There, no longer a stranger, but still perfect if I may say so myself." He grinned cockily at Hannah as he watched her roll her eyes but take his hand and capitulate while Uncle Artie grinned triumphantly in the background.

"Good grief," Hannah muttered audibly to no one in particular. "You can't really expect me to go out with someone who says shit like that, can you?"

Uncle Artie looked smug. "Yes. Yes I can."

* * *

><p>"Oh Hannah! What will you wear!"<p>

"Alice." Hannah shot her best friend a look that clearly said an exclamatory "really" more than anything.

"What?" Alice asked, not really looking at Hannah at all but already perusing the contents of her closet with Hannah's pending date in mind.

"Alice," Hannah almost began to plead. "I don't want to go out on a date with some crazy bartender I don't know."

Alice waved her hand over her shoulder, but continued perusing the depths of her closet. "Well, you'll go on the date and then you'll learn to know him!"

"No, you're not getting it. I don't want to go on the date," Hannah stated plainly, planted miserably on Alice's plush bed. By the time her lunch with her uncle had winded down, James had managed to finagle her phone number out of her. She'd passed it off to him, stupidly, under the assumption that he wouldn't bother to use it. Confusingly, he'd texted her later that very evening while she was force-feeding Kate and Louise escargot ("Do they really eat this crap, Lady Franny?" "I don't see why not. You're never too young to acquire a bit of class."). She had mixed emotions about the entire thing—on the one hand, James was by far the best looking guy that had ever shown interest in her (her friends had described her one serious relationship in college as resembling "Chewbacca in a leather, bomber jacket"), on the other she felt unnecessarily reluctant and oddly terrified that she was out of her league with him.

"Why not?" Alice asked, turning around frowning. God, she looked awful these days, it pained Hannah to admit, her eyes sunken and dark, her cheeks hollow and pale. Ever since Aly had been shipped out into the furthest reaches of nowhere (i.e. Africa? That's as much as any of them could discover. Aly was somewhere on the entire continent of Africa. Thanks for the goodbye, buddy!), she'd been slowly sinking a bit lower in spirits and appearance every day. At least the incessant crying had finally ceased, that was hard to stomach.

"It's just…" Hannah tried lamely, but found she couldn't locate a proper excuse.

"You're afraid."

"Am not!"

Alice frowned deeper at her—god, she did a lot of frowning these days. "Then please provide an adequate excuse for why you should not go on a date with the cute, charming boy that managed to garner enough courage to ask out the intimidating Hannah Argos."

Now Hannah was frowning as well, sulking, really. "I'm not intimidating."

Alice let a wisp of a smile pass fleetingly across her features. "If for no other reason, do it for me. I need a distraction from thinking about—"

The name just sat heavily in the room. God, couldn't he have sent her a letter or something? "Men are assholes," Hannah muttered darkly.

"No, no, no. No you don't," Alice practically tackled her friend on her bed in frustration. "Don't use my pathetic love-life as an excuse for avoiding your own."

"But—"

"No. You're going on this date."

"No, come—"

"And you want to know how I know you're going on this date?"

Hannah shook her head and eyed Alice wearily. "How?"

Alice allowed herself a charming, genuine grin at her friend's expense. "Because I already told Lady Franny about it."

"Oh god," Hannah gasped. "Will there never be a moment's rest."

* * *

><p>Samuel Ashton was, once again, bored out of his fucking mind.<p>

Here he was, locked away in Paris like some sort of Quasimodo—unable to contact anyone worth knowing and only his rather pathetic servants to entertain him. Well, the servants and Maddie—whom, ideally he should be thanking for granting him permission to at least travel with her out of the country so that he was no longer being held hostage in Buckingham like some sort of captive animal.

But it would be hard to thank her at the moment, for she'd dragged him to _another_ obnoxiously uptight restaurant for _another_ afternoon full of tittering ladies and their horrific idle chitchat.

God, it was only a matter of time before he blew his brains out if thing continued this way. Death by boredom, how utterly ridiculous.

"Don't look so bloody miserable, new brother," Maddie muttered out of the corner of her mouth while Sam sat beside her morosely twiddling his tea around its china and trying desperately not to think about how choked his collar was making him nor how hot his jacket was ("Why must I wear this stupid thing! It's Paris in the fucking summer!" "Ah yes, we're all buying this gentleman routine rather splendidly, new brother. Very well stated."). "You look as though someone has just shot your favorite pony."

"I'd rather they just shot me," he muttered back. "Where's this stupid girl anyway? We've been waiting nearly ten minutes."

Maddie mock-gasped. "An entire ten minutes! Can you believe the gall of these peasants?"

"Shut it," he muttered trying to hide his grin. His life so desperately missed abrasive sarcasm since that dreadful American had disappeared on him. Occasionally, he considered ringing her, but then he realized she was just some stupid girl. There was really nothing special about her whatsoever, other than the fact that she provided a much-needed distraction. Nothing else. Plus, she was horribly impertinent. Who cared for her obnoxious banter anyway?

"Oh, Isabel!" Maddie suddenly gasped as their guest finally joined them, sitting herself gracefully at the seat beside Sam, her leg briefly grazing his under the table as she settled herself, crossing her legs casually and tossing her long drape of luminescent blonde hair over her shoulder with a shimmy of her chest.

Well, speaking of distractions. Sam couldn't help but grin.

"I'm very sorry, Madeline," she said, her voice like silk, as she smiled sweetly at Maddie. "My driver is absolutely horrible—he's barely adjusted to driving on the correct side of the road. It's absolutely horrifying."

Maddie grinned graciously at their new companion. "It's perfectly ok, but we really must get a move on. I have an appointment wit a hairstylist at three and I would like to drop Samuel off at the hotel before. He really abhors those sorts of things."

"I'm sure that can be managed," Isabel smirked as Maddie reached into her bag to grab their planning materials for Catherine So-And-So's birthday party ("Surely you know Catherine. She's an heiress. An heiress to Guinness! It's as if you know positively nothing, Samuel!").

While Maddie was momentarily distracted, reaching into her bag to rummage for her calendars and lists and other things Sam really wished to know noting about, Isabel let her eyes flick briefly to him and they connected just long enough for her to lick her lips softly and tuck a smug grin across her face. "It's lovely to see you again, Samuel," she almost purred, her voice slow and calculated.

"Isabel," he nodded at her, a grin popping up in the corners of his own mouth. "A pleasure, as always."

Her eyes flicked quickly away, but her couldn't help but notice her leg brushing against his beneath the table as she shifted position once again.

Well, maybe not so bored after all.

* * *

><p>"Oh, Hannah, dear! You look so beautiful," Lady Franny gushed, practically dabbing her eyes with her hanky as she and Lord Worthington watched Hannah and Alice descend the stairs as if it were the prom scene in some cliché teenage rom-com.<p>

"Er, thanks," Hannah muttered, trying to remain upbeat, but already feeling tortured by the get-up Alice had wrestled her into. A short skirt that sat high on her waist that was from Alice's wardrobe and therefore was about two sizes too small, and a gauzy blouse with a wispy tie around the neck but sat loose across her shoulders and bust, with sweet ankle boots that were just a tad too high to be strictly comfortable. All in all, even Hannah had to admit she looked nice—very date casual—albeit was struggling to breathe in her skirt. She hoped they didn't go out to dinner, if she ate anything she'd break right through the zipper.

"Doesn't she look beautiful, Worthington?" Lady Franny asked, elbowing her husband in the ribs.

Worthington jumped at her elbow being planted into his ribs, although luckily he didn't spill his scotch. "Oh yes, quite lovely. She'll be beating him off with a stick, as they say."

"Who says that?" Lady Franny asked, eyeing her husband angrily before shooting her attention to Hannah. "Hannah, don't beat the poor boy with a stick. It's very rude."

"I can't make any promises, Lady Franny." Hannah laughed and grabbed her summer jacket from Gertie who had fetched it for her with a smirk. "Are you all going to stand here and see me off like some sort of awkward family?" she asked, eyeing them all as they watched her eagerly.

"I suppose we're all hoping for a glimpse of the chap," Gertie chucked. "He has quite the reputation to uphold after Uncle Artie's descriptions."

"God, you're all mad," Hannah chuckled, pulling her hair out from the collar of her coat.

"Yes, yes," Worthington drawled. "When it comes to the male gender, we can't help but all go a bit batty." He grinned at Hannah as she tried to hold back her uproarious laughter.

"I just hope you don't like him too much, Hannah," Lady Franny began to titter nervously as the doorbell rang ominously. "I expect you to be engaged to Sir Daniel by the end of the week, if all goes to plan."

"Lucky for her, they rarely do," Worthington muttered to Hannah as Daniel, the butler, escorted the young gentleman in.

There wasn't even a beat of awkwardness as James stepped up to the leering group—half of their mouths agog like pre-teens at a Justin Bieber concert—and seamlessly introduced himself while Lady Franny fluffed her hair and blushed ("If I were but ten years younger and ten pounds skinnier!"). "It's truly lovely to meet you, James," she practically giggled as he flashed those glittery eyes at her and pushed his well-parted fringe out of his face a bit. "You're… well. Fit."

James chuckled heartily.

"What my wife means to say," Worthington drew with his ironic smile firmly in place, "is that she is quite taken with you although she's much too old for you."

"Lord Worthington, you'll be the death of me, I swear," Lady Franny sulked and fumed, allowing herself a proper blush in the presence of the gorgeous outside.

"We should probably be going?" Hannah suggested, as the hearts radiated out of the eyes of every woman present, tapping Gertie's chin so that she would close her jaw once again.

"Yes, yes. It's been lovely meeting you all," he grinned his charming smirk at her and held out his arm for Hannah with a masculine grace. "Shall we?"

Hannah rolled her eyes and tried to hide her grin as she took his arm anyway. "Indeed," she replied, her voice dripping with irony as he led her out of La Chateau as Lady Franny shouted a warning about minding her poor reputation ("With any luck, she'll return with a ring on her finger!" "Yes, my dear, I'm sure that is commonly how young people concluded their premier dates." "Oh, do shut up, Worthington. I have much more important things to worry about than your prattle. Now. Do you think his family is well off?").

"So that's your family?" James asked as he led her through the streets to the nearest Tube station.

"Of sorts."

"They seem…"

"Insane." Hannah nodded once with a grin. "I know."

* * *

><p><em>I'm back!<em>

_As you can see, we've taken a bit of a step back. Sam is in Paris, very much not behaving himself like he is supposed to be doing, and Hannah has just met her dastardly new love interest. Plus, poor Alice, I know. I hate to do it to her!_

_Alright team. I'm dead on my feet. My new job is insanely exhausting and it's a bit of a struggle to keep up with my life, yet alone my writing. I'm sorry I can't make any promises about an update, I truly am. But I do promise that I will write as much as I can as often as I can, because I love you (and, obviously, your reviews) so dearly._

_Drop me a line, it's always appreciated._


	15. A Walk Down Drudgery Lane

**An American Girl in London**

**Chapter 15**

**A Walk Down Drudgery Lane**

"Mr. Croft, are you trying to get me drunk?" Hannah's voice wobbled a bit uncertainly as James Croft handed her a fourth pint of the evening. It wasn't that she was fall-on-her-face drunk, but she did fear for her ability to stand up properly. James had thus far made no serious mention concerning dinner, and while Hannah's skirt was a bit too tight to seriously miss the opportunity to eat, she was suffering for the excess of beer sloshing around in her empty stomach.

"Drunk? No way. Not me. I would never do that…" James replied with mock-innocence, blinking at her with those beautiful eyes and a blatantly charming grin. "Just… pliable." His grin widened and Hannah felt herself get dizzy, although, to be fair, that could have just been from all the booze.

Thus far, and despite the serious lack of food, their date had gone somewhat smashingly. James was… a real person, and Hannah couldn't help but find that excitingly refreshing after the whirlwind of crazy she had experienced for the past two months. He took her to a run-of-the-mill pub where things were more modestly priced than the horrific parade of excess she'd grown accustomed to and, to be honest, he was well on his way to charming the pants off of her in this very pub's darkly lit corners. Maybe it was the beers talking, but god, he was just so fucking cute.

Hannah grinned back at him. "Oh yes, I'm sure you have a lot of trouble convincing the girls to go home with you. It must be a very difficult existence." Hannah held back her grin, trying to regard him with serious pity that his physical appearance so clearly didn't warrant.

"I'm so glad someone finally understands how hard my life is," he grinned back, trying just as hard as she was to keep her voice level.

"Have you ever tried this? Don't utter a single word. Just keep completely silent." Hannah couldn't help it, her grin finally started to lift through the corners of her mouth. "As a woman, let me tell you, there's nothing worse than when a good looking guy opens his mouth to reveal exactly how horrible his personality is."

"Ah!" James grabbled his chest while Hannah peeled over their table in giggles. "How you wound."

"Aye, a scratch, a scratch."

"Wrong, wrong," James corrected. "'Tis but a flesh wound.' Get it right."

Hannah chuckled, enjoying his mutual understanding of her allusions. "Oh, is it? How very silly of me."

"Yes," he grinned, but his tone grew serious as he looked at her for a moment, catching her in his super powers ("Yes, Alice, amazing abdominals count as super powers! It's like you've never even seen Batman." "There is a man-bat?"). "Very, very silly of you."

Hannah didn't feel uncomfortable in his sudden seriousness as he watched her closely, wetting his very fine, pink lips. "Are you going to kiss me?" she asked, a bit skeptically as she felt his hand reach out and rest gently on her knee. The feel of his fingers on her bare flesh sent a shiver up her body, the kind of physical sensation she hadn't experienced since a rather huge mistake behind a tartan curtain.

James left his hand on her knee and continued to study her for another moment before he pulled away and gasped mockingly. "What? And have you think me easy! Whatever would my mother say if I came home with lovebites all down my chest!"

"'Well done?'" Hannah suggested.

James let a bubble of laughter escape him. "Yes, I do suppose she'd have to be at least a little proud of me for managing that."

"Although, perhaps it's something more suited for inspiring fatherly pride?" Hannah asked, her head tilted slightly to the side, allowing for her hair to slip from behind her ear and curtain around her face.

"I wouldn't know," James replied slowly, reaching out tenderly to tuck her hair back into place, his hand lingering behind her ear, "my father died when I was much younger."

"Oh." The confession washed over Hannah, suddenly making her slightly uncomfortable, her forehead wrinkling in confusion briefly before James pulled her face a fraction closer to her and caressed her cheek lightly with his thumb. From this proximity she could make out every attribute of his face, his glittery eyes sparkling, his cheek creasing into a slight dimple, a tiny scar above his lip causing it to go slightly lopsided.

"Don't pull away," he ordered gently. "Whenever people find out they always pull away and look at me strangely. Yes, I'm _that_ Croft. You caught me."

Hannah pulled away slightly, her confusion doubling. "What do you mean by '_that_ Croft'?"

James eyed her cautiously as they settled into a more normative proximity. "You honestly don't know? Do you not read the paps?" he questioned after searching her face for any spark of recognition.

Hannah jabbed a thumb into her chest. "Ignorant American," she clarified shaking her head slowly. "Enlighten me."

James bit his soft, pink lip, doing massive mental calculations. "Remember at the bar when you asked me if I had any… complaints about the royal family?"

Hannah nodded slowly. "Yes, and you spouted some Shakespearian bullshit."

James gave a reluctant, pained grin. "Well… maybe that wasn't actually bullshit. Maybe that was… true?"

Hannah couldn't help but briefly want to cry. After all, she was mildly inebriated and had just discovered the good looking, normal boy was not quite so normal. It was a bit like finding out Santa Clause didn't exist. ("What does a girl have to do to meet an normal boy in this goddamned country, Gertie?" "I don't know. Be poor?")

"So… you have a personal relationship with the royal family?" she questioned slowly, holding back her frustration.

James winced. "'Relationship' implies a certain kind of kinship. Really our is more of a tale of bitter family rivalry mixed with public, hostility and scandal."

"Can't I meet anyone normal," Hannah sighed to herself before she frowned and took a long drag on her lager. "Ok. Start talking."

"Ok." James took a deep breath. "How well are you acquainted with the royal family?"

Hannah frowned. "Reluctantly, but I met the young prince about a month ago."

"Samuel?"

Hannah frowned. ("Why does everything always come back to that asshole? I hate him, I honestly do!" "And with such ambivalence, too." "Shut up, Gertie!") "You know Sam?" Hannah couldn't help but eye him wearily.

"Yes, a little too well, actually," James looked as though he wanted to laugh audibly at the bleak irony of it all, "and I think you might be the first girl I have ever met that doesn't swoon over his name."

"Yes," Hannah drew monotonously and reluctantly, "I hear he's quite the heartthrob. Didn't inspire much in me beside intense annoyance, though."

"What if I told you that the same car crash that killed my father also killed Sam's parents…?"

Hannah felt her pulse thumping through her throat. "Then I'd say, 'Small fucking world.'" She let her eyes flick over James briefly, his grayish eyes shining at her with an unspoken intensity that lent a weight to their otherwise smashing date. ("I was just too drunk to deal with this situation, Alice. I blame it all on that damn skirt.") "So, your father caused the car accident that killed the future King of England and his young wife?" Hannah replied doubtfully, not quite comprehending how fucking small the world could possibly be ("What are there only twelve fucking people on this goddamned island?").

James chuckled darkly. "No, that's what those bastards paid you to believe. My mother and I have always known, it was Prince George. He caused the accident that killed my father."

Hannah eyed him doubtfully. "You're saying that the royal family paid off the media to change the story so your father was the guilty party instead of the tragically deceased prince? That's crazy."

"It's not crazy. It's the truth. They paid off my mother, too."

"Why would they do that?"

"Because it wasn't a car accident." James eyed her seriously. "Prince George killed my father and his young bride because they were having an affair."

Hannah felt a weird hopelessness creep over her. The whirlwind of crazy only got bigger, didn't it?

She stared off in the distance for a long moment. "Well, you definitely weren't embellishing when you said it was more dramatic than Shakespeare."

* * *

><p>Sam stretched out on his soft, luxurious bed, letting the morning (early afternoon, more like) ripple through him and yank his existence into life.<p>

"Good morning," a soft voice purred beside him as Isabel crawled towards him on his tussled bed, settling her naked body against his, her bare flesh sticking him with all the dried sweat remaining from their evening activities.

"Isabel," Sam muttered darkly. "You're still here."

Isabel peered down at him, her eyes darkening. "Would you rather I left?" she asked gently, allowing her hands to slide down his chest slowly towards his most valued friend.

"No," Sam gasped as she wrapped her fist around him and began even strokes. "But Maddie will be mental if she finds you've spent the night."

"You're honestly thinking about Maddie right now?" she asked, her attentions unperturbed as she continued to have her way with him.

"No," Sam gulped. "I'm thinking about how best to get you out of my room, actually."

Isabel stopped, releasing him from her grip and pulling away from him. She lifted herself into a sitting position and glared at him darkly. "I thought we were just having a bit of fun, Samuel."

"We were. It was. It was a lot of fun, Isabel," he replied evenly yanking on his hair briefly before sitting up in his bed and leaning his back against the headrest.

"But?" Isabel prompted, clearly disappointed despite her determination to appear as ambivalent as possible.

"But I'd rather not get involved with one of my sister-in-law's needy socialite friends," he confessed.

Isabel's eyes flashed with terrifying anger before she quickly hopped out of bed and began ruffling through his bedroom for all her belongings, hopping into her scattered clothes and trying her best to get out of there as quickly as fucking possible.

"Isabel, don't be in such a huff," Sam said, not making much movement to stop her as he continued to lean against the headboard, stretching his toes lazily. "I mean, you of all people should know that there are very specific expectations on me for my future and I just can't squander it in a futile relationship with an unsuitable match."

Isabel stopped as soon as she'd buttoned her skirt, spun it back into place and ceased her attempts to straighten her askew blouse. "Have you ever thought, Samuel, that it's you that's the unsuitable match?"

Sam frowned, but was otherwise nonplussed.

Isabel grabbed her pumps and slung her purse over her shoulder before staring at Sam hard and long, lazing there in his plush bed, hair disheveled, chest bare, not a single worry gracing his features. "You're an asshole, Samuel," she stated blandly. "I wouldn't wish you on a single girl in this entire world." She turned on her bare feet and strutted out of his room.

"Could you use the back door?" he shouted after her retreating form. "I don't want Maddie to find out about this." But his plea fell on deaf ears.

Reluctantly, slowly he heaved himself out of bed, exhausted by the effort of it all. Eventually he wrapped himself in a discarded robe and made is way into the sitting room of their suite to see if he could scavenge any semblance of breakfast. He entered the sitting room, propelled mainly by his stomach, only to find Madeline sitting calmly on a love seat, flipping casually through a French Vogue.

"So. Isabel, really?" she asked, peering up at him over the top of her magazine.

"Oh, you caught that little show?" Sam replied equally casually, poaching strawberries off her discarded breakfast tray. "Was there a menu this morning?"

Maddie merely blinked back at him, her eyes cold and hard.

"I could really use a crepe right now," Sam muttered, tugging on his hair while Maddie continued to eye him with disdain.

"She's right, Samuel," Maddie replied at length, giving up on her examination and returning her attentions to her magazine. "You really are an asshole."

Sam let a guttural groan of frustration escape him before he allowed himself to settle on the settee and take the oncoming lecture he could feel radiating off of Maddie just waiting to bubble up. He sat and waited patiently as she flipped the pages of her magazine with a bit more force than was strictly necessary.

It didn't take long for the thoughts to finally manifest themselves as words and Maddie nearly tore her magazine to pieces before tossing it aside and allowing herself to break. "What kind of horrible brand of immaturity are you hiding behind that makes your rather disgusting actions seem at all acceptable? You're only cheating everyone around you—most of all, your brother who loves you and would do anything for you, but seems to take the hit every time you fuck up." She took a few soothing breaths before she felt a second wind coming on and dove right back in. "I know you think that this entire world evolves around you and you can continue to make one epic mistake after another without ever facing the consequences of your actions, I know you feel cheated by the incredible gift you have been born with and the responsibility that goes along with it. I know that deep down inside you are just a scared, little boy without any grasp of the kind of influence, the kind of great man you could become, but I can't stand around any longer and watch the train wreck that you enjoy making out of your life and the lives of everyone around you. Grow up, Samuel, grow up."

Maddie took long, gasping breaths, recovering from the frustrations of her long-time repressed passions as Sam sat before her, seemingly unaffected, his hands folded upon each other casually as he looked her directly in the eye without a trace of resonance.

"Well stated. Feel any better?" he asked casually once his sister-in-law had regained her composure.

"Yes, although I fear it all fell on deaf ears," she replied, her own formality back in place as she let her frustrations slip away.

"Perhaps," Sam replied coolly. "Rather well done though. I'd have to say, one of the better tirades I've received in my lifetime."

"Thank you," she replied with equal civility.

"Now, about those crepes…"

Maddie gave him another long, cold look. "I think it's best you head back to London this evening."

"Fair enough," Sam replied, reclining back in his chair, crossing his legs comfortably. "After all, I did just have sex with your sister."

* * *

><p>"You don't believe him though, do you?" Alice asked, her eyes wide as she studied Hannah, relaxing casually in Alice's bedroom while Gertie graciously distracted their guest of honor, the rather repugnant Sir Daniel, elsewhere in Le Chateau, allowing Hannah a moment's peace to rehash the rather dramatic turn of events her date had taken with Alice yet again.<p>

Honestly," Hannah replied, "I think I do." She looked up at Alice, who watched her slack-jawed and immediately felt herself rushing to James's defense. "He seemed… really sure of it all. I mean, he even has scars to prove it."

"But isn't it all rather scandalous—bribes, blackmail, murder? Plus, you don't honestly believe that Samuel Ashton is capable of almost beating a man to death?" Alice asked, incredulous that Hannah could think her nation's family capable of such scandal, or that the media could be so easily paid off against reporting such atrocities.

"Why not?" Hannah asked, jumping to attention and sitting a bit more alertly. "You didn't see the look on Sam's face when he spoke about his parents. It's like he shut down." She looked at Alice with utter seriousness. "Yes, it's all really dramatic and probably entirely insane, but in this weird aristocratic world… I honestly believe that these people are capable of almost anything. Especially Sam."

Hannah took a deep breath as Alice fell into a rather morose state of contemplation. "Think about it, Alice. The timing of Prince George's wedding, it was all just a giant ruse to distract everyone while their darling little heartthrob went around nearly killing people. You should see James—you should see the rather gnarly scars scattered across his otherwise perfect body."

"I just…" Alice hopped back to her feet, knocking herself out of her reverie and beginning her previous actions, tucking important belongings into her designer suitcase. "I just don't like to think that such a prominent political figure could be capable of such a horror. Especially without the media leaking a lick of it. Plus, if James is correct about his father's death, think what that could mean. That could rewrite the very foundations of modern history."

Hannah nodded eagerly. "Exactly, Alice. That's exactly my point."

Alice finished stuffing her belongings haphazardly into her bag, zipped it up and fell back on her bed morosely. "I just wish Aly were here. I'm sure there's some sort of explanation he could provide."

Hannah winced and eyed her sadly. "Are you sure that's the only reason you wish Aly were here?" The two girls shared a sad smile, contemplating the rather apologetic Facebook message Alice had received earlier that week from Cynthia explaining Aly's inexplicable determination to keep his location from Alice no matter the cost. Hannah took a deep breath and gave her friend a long, lingering hug of reassurance. "Listen, push this all from your mind. I'll figure out what to do with James, you just worry about enjoying your vacation. Have an amazing time in Ibiza. Get rid of that awful, British complexion of yours. You now only have two things to consider—your tan and all of the dirty things you are going to do to the sexy, rich boys you meet on the beach. Deal?"

Alice let out a breath that sounded strangely like a chuckle, if Hannah didn't know any better, and wrapped her arms around Hannah for another hug. "I'll miss you," she sighed as someone knocked at Alice's door and Gertie could be heard on the other side trying to dissuade someone from entering without more than a second's warning.

Alice and Hannah eyed Sir Daniel as he burst through Alice's door, despite Gertie's attempts to stop him, and stood before them in an overly formal dinner suit that did absolutely nothing to hide the horrible stench of his being and the myriad of other qualities that made Hannah cringe at his presence.

"Miss Argos, I request a word with you, if you don't mind," he stated formally in his nasally, pretentious voice.

Hannah rolled her eyes and took a deep breath of resignation before she reluctantly allowed herself to accept the inevitable. "Do I have to?"

Alice gave Hannah another sad smile of reassurance and whispered to her friend, "What about him? Who will handle him?" to Hannah as Sir Daniel indicated the urgency of her audience.

Hannah shrugged, sighed and allowed herself to be led off to her doom.

* * *

><p><em>This was a very difficult chapter. So much drama. It was very difficult to make it not all seem rather silly, but I tried my best. Really though, I think the story needed a bit more drama to it—can't have things getting boring, can we. Hehehehe.<em>

_Anyway, sorry about the delay. In case you missed it, there was a hurricane in New Orleans (which is where I currently reside) and a week without power can really hinder one's ability to type. But we're back in order and I hope to have more for you as soon as I can._

_I think it's a riot that 95 people follow this story but we only have 84 reviews here—if everyone just reviewed once, I would be so overjoyed that I might just die (although I would obviously come back to life merely for the purpose of finishing this story for you guys). But, reviews or not, I'm just glad to know you guys are out there reading! Thank you!_


	16. A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Breaks

**An American Girl in London**

Chapter 16

A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Breaks

"You will be a most adequate wife."

Hannah sat before Sir Daniel Mayer, in Lady Franny's fine dining room, swamped by the commanding presence of all of Lady Franny's finest things glittering back at her from the ornate tea table that she reluctantly had been forced to perch herself beside upon Sir Daniel's adamant insistence. Her mouth was entirely agog. She still wasn't quite sure why she felt so shocked by his boldness.

"Are you for real?" she asked after a lengthy pause, sighing in resignation that this was, in fact, her life.

"I do not jest," the man declared, puffing his chest out proudly so that his collar opened just enough to reveal his wiry matt of chest hair. Or perhaps that was just someone's shag carpet that he had super glued to his chest. Hannah really didn't put it past him. "Hannah, my dear, I feel most passionately that you will raise our children in a decidedly acceptable manner, that you will permit my access to all of your bodily treasures upon my request, and subsequently that you will make a passable enough wife that the Queen herself will not fault me for such an impetuous choice. Come live in the palace and be my wife."

Hannah blinked at him momentarily before she was overwhelmed by laughter so hardy that globules of spit landed across the bridge of Sir Daniel's nose as he bristled over her reaction.

"No really," she asked after a few heartily amusing minutes, wiping tears of mirth from her eyes, "you have got to be shitting me."

"No, I am most certainly—"

"No, no, no," Hannah said, still giggling mercilessly. "You, like, cannot be serious. What kind of fucked-up universe of perversion do you live in?"

"I do think, Miss Argos, that I am not the sort of man to still marry you after such ridicule!" Sir Daniel's face was turning a hearty shade of purple as he cheeks puffed out like some sort of cartoon character.

"No shit, dude! I sure fucking hope not." Hannah's mirth was still etched on her face.

"And to think I was willing to overlook your impropriety, your inferiority, and your bland looks."

"Listen, buddy," Hannah began, her laughter finally abated after his insults. "You and I exist in two blissfully separate universes. Thank god. And while I'm sure that in this world I seem to have stumbled unwillingly into, you're quite a catch with your highly erotic hair plugs and your oh-so-flattering advances, but it's just not my thing."

"I'll have you know that I am knighted!" Sir Daniel's vehemence began to overwhelm him as he rose to his feet and physically bristled. "My family is held in the highest regard by the grand ruler of my beloved nation and I will not be-be slighted by some… foreign b-bi-bi-bitch!"

Hannah rolled her eyes. "I prefer to be called an American whore." Hannah rose slowly, trying to hide her mirth by tucking her smile into the corners of her mouth. "And I think for the sake of your most revered reputation, I should hope I never see you again."

She walked briskly to the door, hoping to escape before her laughter overcame her. She barely made it up the stairs and back into Alice's room, where Gertie and Alice were most startled by her sudden appearance and apparent hysteria.

* * *

><p>By the time Sam stumbled off his private jet in London, he was entirely pissed on whisky and scarcely upright.<p>

"Ah, the prodigal son," came the droll reply of his brother waiting patiently for him at the foot of the exit ramp.

"Georgie Porgie!" Sam slurred excitedly, throwing his arms happily into the air and effective sloshing himself with a £1,000 Talisker. "My favorite fucking brother!" Sam stumbled on his step and slammed himself down the last three stairs, landing face-first at his brother's feet.

Sam peered up deliriously, groaning in dissatisfaction and blissfully only minorly scraped, at his older brother. George stood above him, glaring down at him with an obvious mixture of pity, disapproval, and amusement stretched across his otherwise chiseled and well-meaning features. His well-tailored trench coat was flapping slightly around his broad chest in the horrid England weather, his alligator loafers peering out from under his pristine black trousers, tapping the tarmac impatiently. He made no attempt to help Sam up, just allowed his brother to remain sprawled across the pavement at his feet.

"A very fine entrance," he stated clearly, his foot continuing to tap.

Sam groaned again and began to roll over just as the rather scantily clad flight attendant came rushing down the staircase. By the time she reached him, Sam had managed to pull himself to his knees where he coughed until he caught his breath and his sudden nausea abated. The girl made a grab for his hand to help him to his feet, but he shook her off and slowly clambered his way into a somewhat upright position, still clutching his back and hunched over slightly.

"No, please don't trouble yourself, brother. I'm not injured, thanks for asking," Sam groaned drolly.

George merely allowed a single eyebrow peak as he replied stonily, "You slept with my sister-in-law."

Sam let a grin break across his face as he pointed an accusing finger at George. "Actually, I fucked your sister. There's a very significant difference."

George grunted, his face still stony, turned on his heel and trudged back towards his awaiting limousine. Sam clutched his back, stretched himself out, and followed limping in his brother's wake.

"You can not continue to behave yourself as such, Samuel," George began as soon as Sam had slid painfully into the car and shut the door.

Sam rested his head against the windowpane and let out a slow breath.

"You're really quite lucky that I've secured Isabel's silence. Even Grandmother doesn't know. Imagine the headlines," George continued in an even manner, only clear to Sam just exactly how angry he was, the rest of his emotions tucked silently into the unseen folds of George's propriety.

"'Incest in the Modern Ages'?" Sam asked. "Or 'Prince Slams Sister' might do."

George turned his gaze towards Sam and held him in his searing blank look. George had had that royal impassability down from infancy. He'd been born with that look.

"Look," Sam tried to quell the tension, turning his gave forwards, "it was all in good fun."

George took a deep breath. "If you really believe that, you're even sadder than I thought."

A long, heavy silence fell between them, each brother staring introspectively out of their respective windows, almost identical faces of subtle frustration drawing across their features.

"Listen, I'm just so fucking tired of these inane lectures," Sam snapped suddenly.

George blinked at him. "Then stop shagging your way across bloody Britain."

"Technically, it was France."

A beat passed before both boys' faces split with identical grins. Another beat and they were both chuckling heartily at their predicament.

"I'm sorry if I've cocked things up with Maddie," Sam replied as their laughter abated but the general tone remained.

"I'm mostly positive you did that years ago," George replied, nodding at the circumstances that Maddie and George had met under—while poor Maddie stumbled out of Samuel's bedchamber after a rather long weekend visit from his little brother to his college apartment. George had cooked her pancakes (or rather burnt her pancakes) and she'd left with his phone number and a hazy memory of sleeping with his 16-year-old brother.

"Well, if I'd known you were going to marry her, I wouldn't have shagged her." Sam's grin began to appear again. "Although, you should probably know that she's much better than her sister. I'm probably the only bloke that could tell you that."

George winced. "Please refrain from sharing information of that nature in the future, please, Samuel."

Sam held up his palms in truce. "I'm just saying. Who wants to roll around with a girl who keeps looking at her own figure in the mirror?"

"Stop, stop, you daft moron," George began to growl, lunging at his brother and wrestling him into a playful headlock.

"Her tits are amazing though," Sam choked out, his face going purple as his brother tightened his grip.

"I'm not letting you go until you promise to never speak about shagging members of my family ever again," George declared, beginning to tug on his brother's unruly hair with his hand that was not currently cutting off his air supply.

"Fine, fine," Sam squeezed out, gagging in his brother's grip. "I promise."

"Good." Just as suddenly, George released him and Sam retreated to his corner of the car, rubbing his sore neck and gasping to regain his breath. "Are you fucking mental?" he exclaimed, color slowly normalizing in his face.

"A genetic predisposition, some might say," George said evenly, sitting properly as if nothing had happened, only a small smile hanging on at the corners of his lips.

Sam regained his breath and settled himself into a comfortable position, casually sprawling his feet out in front of him, although tensing his hands into a position ready for battle should George spring again. He grinned and continued to look ahead as if not even minding George's presence. "Although really," he began already ready, "you should hear the moans that girl makes when she's riding you."

Despite being prepared for the assault, he was no match as George lunged at him.

* * *

><p>"Oh, darlings, I feel like there isn't a word in the English language that could describe how utterly terribly I will miss you two," Lady Franny gushed, fanning herself in distress as her husband tried desperately to wrestle Kate and Louise into their towncar and Louise tried desperately to claw his face off.<p>

"Ineffable," Worthington shouted from the curb as he finally relented and just allowed Kate to sit upon his feet and wail in despair while Louise climbed her way onto his head to sit perched like a hat.

"Worthington," Lady Franny scolded over her shoulder. "Watch your language in front of the girls!"

Worthington caught Hannah's eye and they both tried to hide their grins before he tossed a friendly salute of farewell her way, snatching up his two unruly daughters and locking them hastily into the car with him. Their wails of disapproval could still be heard through the soundproof windows.

"We will miss you as well," Gertie replied evenly, embracing Lady Franny for the umpteenth time dutifully.

"I feel absolutely dreadful about whisking off to Paris for the rest of the summer and leaving my two lovely girls here to rot in dreary London. Especially you Gertie, what an inopportune time for you to finally get engaged. You really must plan your wedding for more suitable season, my dear girl."

"I will try to keep that in mind for my next marriage," Gertie replied evenly.

Hannah's mouth curled in confusion and she eagerly sought her friend's attention to question whichever of Lady Franny's delusions was in action at the moment, but Gertie was most decidedly avoiding all of her attempts to garner attention.

"And Hannah," Lady Franny gushed, not noticing the two girls' interaction as she swamped Hannah into a bone-crushing hug, "can I really not convince you to come with us? And to think you've never been to France!"

Hannah chuckled. "I thought this was going to be… 'family time'?" Hannah asked wearily. Lady Franny had been going back and forth about the propriety of bringing a nanny with them to the Cote de Azur. Finally, Hannah had taken herself out of the equation, opting for staying with her uncle for some family bonding time of her own (and if that just so happened to lead to some bonding time with James as well, then so be it).

"Oh, where is Alice!" Lady Franny asked in exasperation, practically throwing her arms in the air in frustration. "I really hate having to rush off to these horrid airports. We're all going to miss our flights." Her eyes lit up suddenly. "Perhaps then we could fly private? And my reputation would be saved," she muttered to herself. "Never mind, Alice dear, you take your time, love!"

"I'm right here," Alice said perkily hauling her suitcase out of Le Chateau.

"Alice, what would the neighbors say if they saw you hauling about your own possessions?" Lady Franny gushed, indignation rising to her cheeks.

"Well done?" Hannah suggested, smirking at Lady Franny's constant fretting.

Alice smiled thinly at Hannah before dropping her suitcase unceremoniously onto the sidewalk and wrapping Hannah in a sweetly depressing hug. It was strange to think the pair of them had met only a short three months ago, but saying goodbye felt like a difficult situation that left words stuck uncomfortably in Hannah's throat.

"Do you have to leave?" Gertie asked after Alice had wordlessly ended their embrace and moved on to the next girl.

Alice gave a watery smile. "I think I'm actually looking forward to this vacation," Alice responded, although regret was heavy in her voice. "And I hear Ibiza is lovely. I cant… just-just sit around here waiting." She crushed herself against her friend again, trying to hide the sudden onslaught of tears. She pulled back slowly, gently and subtle running her knuckles under her eyes. "I'm very sorry to miss the wedding though. I'm sure it will be perfect in so many ways."

Gertie nodded, totally expressionless and Hannah felt hit with another wave of confusion. What was she missing here?

With one final unsettling hug from Lady Franny and a tearful smile from Alice they finally settled themselves into the towncar (the girls still wailing inside while their father looked as if he wanted this trip to be over already). Hannah and Gertie stayed on the sidewalk, waving them out of view.

"What am I missing?" Hannah asked out of the side of her mouth, once the car had pulled an adequate distance from them.

Gertie didn't immediately answer; continuing to wave and smile thinly even once the car had turned the corner.

Her stolid reaction did nothing to reassure Hannah about the rest of the house's adamant delusions. "Gertie…?" she asked slowly, slightly shocked that she even had to utter this next question. "Why does everyone seem to think you're getting married?"

Gertie turned to face her friend with a mildly pained expression, like a small child facing their parent after a rather epic mistake.

Hannah felt her chest compressing with an uncomfortable, fearful sensation, as if walking up stairs in the dark and feeling your foot miss a step. Her eyes grew wide, bold. "To who?!" she asked incredulously.

Gertie continued to wince. "Sir Daniel."

"What!"

Gertie wiped her remorseful wince away and at least had the gall to appear slightly perturbed. "He asked me this morning. We're getting married next week."

Hannah suddenly couldn't breathe. "In a week?" she asked, her voice painful in her lungs.

Gertie shrugged. "I'm not getting any younger, Hannah. I've been at this whole thing for far too long. I just want to be married. I don't wish to be dependent on Lady Franny any longer. And Sir Daniel… he's a nice, honorable man."

"Woah, woah. You are aware that he just proposed to me like two seconds ago, right? Like if our lives were a novel, these two events would have taken place in the same goddamn chapter."

"Yes, I am aware."

Hannah eyed her skeptically. "Ok," she replied at length, "just so long as we're clear on that."

"So will you come stay with us for the wedding? I'd love to have at least one friendly face with me through all of this."

Hannah took a deep breath and released it without any idea whatsoever what she was getting herself involved in. God was this really how things happened? So suddenly? So… unromantically? (And oh how Hannah hated that notion, but its absence made the entire concept of marriage seem nothing short of retarded.)

"Yeah," she stuck her best, forced smile onto her face while wrapping her arm over Gertie's shoulders, "of course I'll be there."

* * *

><p>"So why did Alice leave again?" James asked, his arm wrapped snugly over her shoulder as she snuggled next to him giggling over an episode of <em>The Inbetweeners<em> and trying to forget the 50 other things bouncing miserably though her mind. Although, apparently, even James couldn't get said troubles off his mind. God, when did her life become a fucking Nora Ephron movie?

"Because she's depressed and because she needs to figure out where to go with her life from here," Hannah replied. At least James had given her an easy one.

"And she's depressed because that Aly guy mysteriously disappeared?" he questioned, running his finger slowly across her bare shoulder just under the sleeve of her shirt.

"Yes, and because she just needs some time to get over that," Hannah replied, trying to force her attention onto the show and shake his probing questions.

They fell into a nice, momentary silence before he broke it again. "And Gertie is marrying that creepy chap again, why?"

Hannah looked at him with mild annoyance. She shrugged heavily. "Because she's practical?"

"That's very reassuring, is it?"

"Well," Hannah tried to wrack her brain for some sort of justification for her (in her opinion) sadly mistaken friend, "I suppose we don't all get the romantic happy ending. Some of us just have to settle for 'moderately okay'." Her thoughts flicked to Alice. "And some of us just get our hearts broken."

James rubbed her arm in a more compassionate, comforting manner. "So I guess that makes you one of the lucky few, then?" he asked, a huge sloppy grin splitting across his features.

Hannah felt a modest, suggestive grin of her own growing. She'd been seeing James for just over three weeks now, and while they had settled into a slightly more comfortable position of normalcy than their first date had originally suggested, by matter of sheer circumstance, this was her first foray into the intimacy of his flat. It wasn't for lack of trying, she'd been doing everything in her power to get him naked for the past few weeks, but he'd been pretty insistent on the whole formality of dating—or rather too awkwardly British to pick up on her advances. Hannah had to admit she hadn't been with a guy since that incident behind that tartan curtai—well, for a very good while, and she was pretty excited to see what James could bring to the table.

She found herself unable to take the wait any longer, and pounced on James before he could fully grasp what was happening. They kissed solidly for a few minutes as she climbed from her seat beside him on the couch and into his lap, allowing her hands to blindly seek the hem of his t-shirt and slowly slip her fingers beneath. He jumped at her touch and pulled away slightly. "Cold," he grinned shivering slightly.

"I'm sorry," she giggled. "Should I stop?"

He shook his head hastily, wrapping both of her hands between his larger, rougher pair. He rubbed them quickly then blew his hot breath on them. "That should do it," he said, releasing her with a grin. "Please, as you were."

Hannah chuckled. She liked James. He brought a certain lighthearted silliness to their interaction that put her at ease in an otherwise Martian world for her.

Slowly she allowed her fingers to find the hem of his shirt once again. She ran her hands slowly over his rather well crafted abdomen while their eyes met and she quickly lifted his shirt over his head before they could resume kissing. She felt his fingers finding the buttons of her shirt, slowly tackling the buttons while continuing to kiss her deeply. Her top slipped over her shoulders and without much hesitation he was reaching behind her to unhook her bra.

As soon as she felt her bare flesh his the chill of his flat, she pulled the pair of them into a lying position on his couch, him on top to warm her, her nipples almost aching from the chill. His body didn't remain on hers for very long though, as he kneeled between her thighs to undo her jeans and slide them over her legs while she lifted her hips to allow him to slip them off.

"God," he almost sighed, looking down at her lying before him, totally naked.

"Don't talk," she ordered pulling him back down to warm her body with his again.

They kissed for another long moment before he began to make his way down her neck, finding her breasts with his tongue and taking her painfully over-active nipples into his warm mouth. She almost shuddered at the relief of his warmth, but couldn't help but giggle at the slightly overzealous nature of his ministration as she felt her breasts being tongued like an ice cream cone. She ordered herself not to laugh as he earnestly had his way with her chest before reaching between the two of them to unzip his own pants.

"Shit," he breathed as he managed to open the front of his pants and lower them just below his hips.

She felt everything between them come to screeching halt as he sat upright and she could suddenly, and very clearly, see what was the cause of the sudden halt in their progression.

"It's not…" he grumbled wrapping himself in a fist and trying desperately to pump it to attention, "…working."

Hannah had to really stop herself from giggling this time. "Yeah, I see that."

He looked up at her as if stung—should she have kept totally quiet? She didn't think it was crazy to see at least a little bit of humor in the whole situation—before he quickly jumped away from her and immediately re-buttoned his pants. He sat forlornly at the far end of the couch while she slowly re-gathered her own clothes and the humor of the situation quickly left her.

"Does this happen often?" she asked slowly, having fully dressed and settled herself unhappily on the couch again, the pair of them no longer touching.

James shrugged, not really even managing to look at her. "Occasionally."

She nodded slowly. "Ohhhh-kay," she drawled. "I should… go?"

He nodded resolutely. "I think that's for the best."

* * *

><p><em>Oh, I am just so very mean! Poor Hannah. That's the worst.<em>

_First of all, I'm sorry for having taken forever and a day to write this chapter. It's been… I would say hectic, but not so much hectic as totally exhausting. So I am sorry for opting for sleep when I obviously should have been writing! I will not let it happen again._

_This chapter… was difficult. I didn't mean for so many things to happen all in one block. This was supposed to be like three chapters worth of material… But I can't help it that I am subconsciously fast forwarding to Hannah and Sam meeting again! Also, I'm sorry if my rush is making things confusing plot-wise. Please let me know if I am not making sense._

_As for the general thought that Sam is a douchey man-slut, yeah, I'll agree with you on that. I won't psychoanalyze him for you, but Sam has lots of sex for a very particular reason. And as for the Douchey-Darcy bit, well obviously I am not going for a very idealistic version of Darcy here. I think, in modern times, Darcy would be a bit of a douchebag that's used to getting whatever he wants and doesn't seem to take other people's feelings or the way people see him much into consideration. And thus, yes. I'd agree he'd a man-slut, but I still like him. I promise he does have redeeming qualities. I hope you don't feel as though I've ruined this ideally perfect man. Nobody is perfect._

_Sam and Hannah will meet again _very _soon. Hopefully I'll have the next chapter up by Christmas…? Hopefully. Also, I'm one away from 100 REVIEWS! Help a sister out?_


	17. Reunited and It Feels Like Shit

**An American Girl in London**

Chapter 17

Reunited and It Feels Like Shit

_Dearest Hannah,_

_ Please stop worrying so much about me. Ibiza is beautiful, if nothing else. The gentlemen here are of a most interesting variety. They wear these horrid vest tops that show off half of their chests, if they even bother to put on clothes in the first place. They also like to high-five to such an ungodly extent that I worry I will acquire calluses. Needless to say, I do not believe this is the place for finding a replacement for Aly although I'm sure I could easily find something, as you would describe it I'm sure, a bit more on the fun side of things._

_ I'm sorry to hear about James. It is sad that things between you ended so prematurely (please pardon my rather crass pun). But I'm sure with Gertie's sudden nuptials and your subsequent visit to Buckingham, you will have plenty to occupy your time whilst I am away. Still, I do miss you terribly. I have no one here with which to explain what exactly a "douche rocket" is to me. I feel horribly inept at this entire party thing, although I will take your advice and "try plastering myself with an ungodly amount of alcohol."_

_ As I said, please stop worrying about me. There is nothing like sunshine and one of the world's most beautiful beaches to cure a broken heart. If nothing else, though, I shall return to my beloved England with a very nice tan, or, in comparison to you, slightly less glaringly pale._

_ Miss you! _

_ With love from,_

_ Alice_

* * *

><p>Hannah heaved her duffel up onto her arm and stared up at the monstrosity before her as her driver ("I'll send a driver over tomorrow for you." "Can't I just take a cab, Gertie?" "Hannah, dear, you can't just take a cab into Buckingham Palace!") tried to pry it out of her grasp.<p>

"Listen, Davis," Hannah almost growled, yanking her bag away from his grasp yet again. "I told you. You can drive me here. You can be my best fucking friend, even. But you sure as hell can't touch my shit, got it?"

Davis tucked a smile into the corners of his cheeks and dipped his head, tipping his cap to her. "As you wish, ma'am."

Hannah turned to glare at him. "And don't ever call me ma'am again, ok?"

"As you wish, Miss Argos," Davis said, tipping his cap again.

Hannah smiled warmly at him. "Wonderful! You know what, Davis? I think we're going to get along famously."

"As you wish, Miss Argos."

"And, Davis," she said turning back to him after staring up at the foreboding building as if it might suddenly crumble and bury her under a load of suffocating propriety, "you're gonna need a new catch phrase. _Princess Bride_ already stole that shit, dude."

She took her time wobbling under the weight of her duffel towards the palace, although she didn't make it far before she noticed a petite well-dressed woman in a light daffodil skirt-suit dashing like mad out of the palace.

"Hannah," Gertie gasped, crushing Hannah into a slightly desperate hug.

"Gertie, you look… like a 90-yaer-old woman dressed you," Hananh managed to reply, her lie having been replaced rather quickly with her usual brash honesty at the very last moment.

Gertie giggled at her friend, looping their arms together and beginning to pull Hannah, still quite slowly, towards the palace. "And you look… nice? Don't worry. You might have time to change before meeting Her Majesty."

Hannah frowned at the second insult to her appearance made that day, the first, of course, from Uncle Artie ("Oh, darling I'll be surprised if The Queen doesn't immediately have a heart attack after setting eyes on the likes of you!"). What was so wrong with what she was wearing? In fact, Hannah had spent her past week with her gay uncle, rejoicing over her freedom from Lady Franny's overzealous upkeep, and the rediscovered ability to wear flats. So now she stood before the palace in a pale blue scarf over a white, eyelet dress with cap sleeves and a pale blue underlayer, her feet ensconced in rather chunky brown boots with a bearably low heel. All in all, Hannah felt comfortable… or at least as much comfort as your favorite outfit can offer you when facing one's dreaded first encounter with The Queen.

"On a scale of one to ten, ten being the worst, how horrible is it in there?" Hannah asked, as Gertie finally tugged her the last remaining feet towards the service entrance.

"Nine," Gertie replied solidly as she nudged Hannah through the doors. "You're going to love it."

* * *

><p>"Samuel, I must say I wasn't expecting you back from France so soon." The old woman on the other side of the desk pursed her lips and eyed her grandson over the rims of her spectacles, trying to make out the exact inner working of his soul… or at least that was how it felt to Sam as he lounged casually in the rather stiff chair across from her. Queen of the fucking country and she couldn't find a better chair than this?<p>

Sam eyed his cuticles, trying not to reveal anything to her scrutiny. "Oh, yes, Grams. Did quite a bit of soul searching over there. Really tried to," her grasped the lapel of his casual blazer, "get down deep to the very heart of Samuel Ashton."

She raised a solitary eyebrow. "Perhaps there wasn't too much soul to search through if you could achieve this in so short a time span, Samuel," she replied evenly.

George, seated almost cheerfully in the chair beside Sam, nearly lost himself in laughter before he recovered under their grandmother's scrutiny and quickly masked it with a cough.

Sam grinned. "Ah, Grams, I never knew you were capable of such mockery." He clutched his chest yet again, his fist beating gently against his heart. "You wound me so."

Her jaw clenched and Sam knew immediately that it was time to sit up and pretend to be a good little boy. "Why is it, Samuel, that I once again find myself wondering what to do with you."

"Perhaps you should cut me loose?" He whirled his hand in the air as if gesturing to some far-off point. "Let me go on my merry way—"

"Perhaps I should hire you a babysitter," she snapped. "Would you like someone to wipe your bum for you too, Samuel? God knows you expect someone else to take care of every other mess you have made in your life."

"Perhaps it's time we quit being so stodgy, Grams? Let the people know we're only human. Make a few modest mistakes, break a few traditions."

"Yes, Samuel," she began, sounding almost friendly for a brief and shining moment. "What a wonderful idea. Why don't we go and make it seem as though any buffoon can run our country at the exact moment in which every buffoon seems to think they should!" She pounded her fist angrily on the table, and Sam felt his brashness jumping back ten steps, like a small scolded schoolboy.

"It was merely a suggestion," he muttered darkly.

"Our role in this country is under threat by an assembly of idiots that call themselves The Media. And while your recent behavior seems to portray that you have absolutely no idea the great honor and responsibility that our family carries for this country, the last thing I need is you acting like a petulant child for the mere purpose of fueling their flames."

"I'm not trying to fuel flames." Sam cast his eyes briefly towards his brother, looking for some sort of defense. It wasn't forthcoming. George's eyes remained locked on the intricacies of their grandmother's desk. "I'm just trying to…"

"To what, Samuel?" she looked at him sternly. "What exactly is the purpose of your antics? Because I can not think of any justification beyond stark stupidity."

Sam hung his head in shame. Well, the woman had a point.

The three of them sat there in defeated silence, letting her words sink in before she began shuffling papers around her desk searching for something less futile to devote her efforts to. "Now, please be gone from my sight, Samuel. I have no urge to beat a dead horse today."

Sam slowly clamored to his feet as if the wind had been knocked out of him. Gosh, he sure did love these nice little family chats. He hobbled to the exit from the rather grand office, tottering on the horrible mind-fuck his grandmother had just granted him while George followed him to tell the social secretary to escort in their next appointment.

Downcast and thoroughly chastised, Sam almost walked entirely past her before he stopped dead in his tracks, his loafers squeaking to halt on the elaborate tile floor. "Hannah?"

There she stood before him wearing a dress of snow white, scattered with holes and a hem well above her knees, blinking at him like she had just had Botox injections and still wasn't quite capable of expression.

"Of course I run into you," she said after a steadying breath, closing her eyes and trying her best to appear unaffected, "on today of all days."

He just stared at her, somewhat not believing that she was there and dressed like that just moments after he'd had his own ass handed to him on a platter. Good god, the girl sure had timing, if nothing else—for what better time for a bit of fun?

"I'm sorry," George said coming up to the pair of them, Sam just blinking at her while she tried her best not to look at him full-stop, "Miss… Hannah?" George cast Sam a pointed, puzzled look. "Will you be joining us?" he gestured to the small crowd of people waiting to enter the Queen's domain and held out a hand to lead her in.

"I'm sorry. Yes. Of course." She grasped George's proffered hand softly and stepped away from Sam. In only two seconds the door was closed and she was gone.

Sam wiped a hand over his face, rubbing his palm forcefully over his features until he was gripping his own chin in thought before a wicked grin dimpled his cheeks as he remembered an unfulfilled challenge.

What did it matter what his grandmother thought? What did it matter what the whole damn country thought? Sam had much more important things to worry about. Like how to make that horrible Hannah Argos shag him silly.

* * *

><p>"So you're the young lady that is hoping to marry my top footman?"<p>

Hannah had to hide her chuckle of amusement into her fist. This was not real life. Real people didn't have footmen or say such obnoxious things with such a vile air of superiority. And to top that off, the heir to the throne was casting her furtive looks of baffled interest, clearly having noticed the obnoxious twist of fate that had just taken place in the hallway. Of course, Sam was here; after all it was his fucking palace!

Oh god, couldn't she do anything normal?

The Queen cast her a brief glance that conveyed so much hearty disapproval that Hannah almost felt herself beginning to sober from the loopy cloud of hysteria that had hit her ever since she'd entered this rabbit hole (cough… palace. Not rabbit hole… _palace_). The old bag had proven to her instantaneously that she wasn't dreaming, like a good kick to the ovaries.

"And what of your friend here?" Oh god, suddenly everyone's attention was on her, and, to be honest, Hannah had willfully zoned out the past 15 minutes of useless prattle.

"Oh right, you're talking to me now," Hannah said, hardly realizing she was speaking out loud. "Hannah Argos. I believe it's an honor." Hannah stood from her seat and performed a rather precarious curtsy. Across the room the other prince was trying to mask his chuckles in coughs while everyone else stared at her agog until she plopped herself, blushing furiously, back into her seat. Hannah tried to hide her own smile, despite her mortification, as her eyes caught the heir-apparent's from across the room.

"American, I see," the grand lady drawled.

Hannah rolled her eyes. "Pardon me, Your Majesty, but why does everyone always say that as if it's an insult?"

The Queen lifted a solitary eyebrow in challenge. "The ability to misunderstand the traditions of other nations is a very colonial attribute."

"Excuse me for saying," Hannah's eyebrow shot up, almost an exact mirror of the woman's challenging facial expression, "but apparently that is not a trait singular to Americans. And I do believe people stopped calling us The Colonies a good 250 years ago."

"Yes, I recall."

"Really?" Both of Hannah's eyebrows shot up in response. "Surely you're not that old."

The prince gave a hearty snort of amusement that just couldn't be muffled. Gertie and Sir Daniel, who were nestled together nervously, watching this exchange as if their entire life's happiness hung in the balance, took simultaneous, sharp breaths of agony. The Queen, however, remained entirely nonplussed, merely boring her eyes into a stubbornly unapologetic Hannah for a very long, painful moment before her lips puckered together and the corners of her mouth turned up ever so slightly.

"I like her," she declared suddenly while everyone else in the room released the breath they'd been holding. "Horribly crass, but that's to be expected, and yet her wit amuses me. George," she directed towards her grandson, "invite her to afternoon tea tomorrow." She shot her stern gaze to Gertie and Sir Daniel. "As for you two. I give you my blessing. Marry if you will. I'll arrange everything for this Friday. Dismissed." She lifted her hand and flipped it until it was palm up, her attention already redirected to the work laid out for her upon her desk.

The group assembled quickly began to make their retreat. Hannah just as happy to be out of the room as anyone else, if not more so, was following closely on the heels of Gertie and Sir Daniel, relieved she'd only made a partial ass of herself, as opposed to a complete one. She'd barely made it four steps out of the luxurious, and disgustingly spacious, office before she heard a voice calling her back.

"Miss Argos," none other than Prince George himself said, almost trotting to catch up with her.

"Oh go," Hannah muttered, turning to face him. "Am I in trouble?"

Once again, the prince found himself on the edge of hysterics. "In trouble?" he almost chuckled. "Why on god's earth would you think that?"

Hannah looked at him skeptically. "I don't know? Because I didn't say, 'Your Majesty' or something. I believe you guys have hung people for less…"

The Prince just smiled at her. While Hannah had been reading storybooks about dashing princes since she was a fetus, never had she felt such a thing embodied so perfectly as she did when Prince George smiled at her. He was just so charming and… dashing and… cliché. He leaned in conspiratorially. "While those things may or may not still take place, I'm not sure I could sentence a person who can make my grandmother smile and my brother's jaw hit the floor all in the course of—what? A half hour?—to death."

"Shit. You saw that too?" Hannah winced to herself while the prince attempted to check his chuckles again. "Let's just say your brother and I aren't the best of friends."

The prince's eyebrows shot up. "Oh, so you're the one girl in the whole world that's resistant to his charms?"

Hannah rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I get the feeling your brother isn't quite used to hearing the word no."

"Not very often, no. My grandmother just finished telling him off for it. She literally used the phrase 'petulant child.'"

Hannah grinned. "Oh man, that is priceless."

George grinned in return, the two of them having warmed to each other immediately. "You're a most remarkable girl, Miss Argos."

"Call me Hannah. Please."

"Ok, Hannah. You may call me George."

"And you're sure I won't be hanged?" she asked, eyeing him skeptically while her single eyebrow lifted half of her face.

George nodded. "Yes. I promise."

"Ok, well then thank you, George," Hannah said with a small smile.

George began to lead her down the hallway with a friendly gesture. "So, Hannah, what on Earth are we going to do about my brother?"

Hannah rolled her eyes and shrugged. "Tie him up and throw him in the Thames?"

George grinned. "Yes, I like you very much indeed, Hannah. I fear we are fast becoming friends."

Hannah bobbed her head happily. "Yeah, you should be afraid."

* * *

><p><em>See? Before Christmas! What'd I tell you! It's an entire week before Christmas. Now, if you guys are good little girls and boys maybe I will see about getting another chapter up before New Years. What do you think?<em>

_Ahahahaha… BTW someone asked me if Sam was gay and I find this HILARIOUS. Gay. That'd be wonderful. But no, merely tortured and pathetic. And a bit whiny. I think he's about to get a taste of his own medicine. But then again, what do I know?! _

_I've been waiting AGES for George and Hannah to meet. While I so miss Aly because he's the most fun character ever, George and Hannah will get along famously, I think._

_Merry Christmas everybody (and happy other holidays too)!_


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